Summary Of The Book
An offshoot of the famous blog, Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind by award-winning blogger Arnab Ray, May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss rakes up several random topics that a young Indian can invariably identify with. A non-fictional satirical piece of work, the book contains the writer’s personal opinion on a range of subjects like Indian politics, moral policing, mushrooming business schools, big fat Indian weddings, and Indian movies.
Arnab Ray, in his inimitable style, creates a sassy portrait of the present-day India in May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss. Bolstered by the economic reforms of the 1990s, India has witnessed a sea of change in the lifestyle of the populace, especially in the urban areas. Against the backdrop of a burgeoning nation, the young and the restless, especially the ones who had their formative years in the 80s and 90s, have experienced several new phenomena. Being a part of that generation, Arnab Ray has seen the change in the urban landscape, the paradigm shift in the young Indian’s mindset, the IT boom, and the cable television revolution. In the book, he discusses an array of issues relevant to this phase in India’s history.
May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss features the liberal usage of ‘Hinglish’, the contemporary Indian lingo, and no-holds-barred humour. Arnab Ray uses clever titles for the book’s chapters, some of which are, The Great National Terror Strategy, Nowhere Resident Indians, Moro-Cop - Diary Of A Moral Cop, How To Start Your Own Management Institute, and How Bollywood Made Me Who I Am. Many of the chapters are sprinkled with first-person accounts of the writer’s personal experiences.
Published in 2010, May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss became an ‘unexpected’ bestseller. It received generally favourable reviews from reputed Indian critics and was also included in the bestseller list of India Today.
About Arnab Ray
Popularly known as Greatbong in cyberspace, Arnab Ray has a devoted following for his cheekily titled blog, Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind.
After the release of May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss, Arnab Ray released his first fictional work, The Mine, a horror novel with psychological overtones in 2012. He has contributed several articles to renowned publications like Live Mint, Outlook and The Washington Post.
After graduating with an engineering degree in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, Arnab Ray attended the State University of New York for his PhD in Computer Science. He currently resides in a Washington DC suburb and holds a full-time occupation as a research scientist in a consultancy firm. Arnab Ray primarily puts across his personal views on different topics through his blog, although several entries are sundry real-life experiences. The blog has received several awards, and it was voted as the Most Humorous Indian Blog of the Year (2006 and 2008) and Indian Blog of the Year (2006 and 2008).
