Some trivia from the Madhouse book.

Some trivia from Madhouse-True stories of the inmates of Hostel4 IITB

 

• Total words in the book: 93,515 in (335+20) pages. 420,292 characters without spaces.

• Total raw material before selection: Approx 200,000 words.

• Number of stories: 187

• Number of photos: 32 plus 1 illustration

• Credited contributors: 42

• Supporting contributors: An additional 50 approx.

• Shortest story: 22 words by Ashanka Sen on page 42.

• Longest story: 2,666 words by Bakul Desai on pages 303 to 311.

• Most commonly used word: “the” with 4775 occurrences constitutes 5.22% of the book.

• Major surprise discovery: Just 11 words constitute 25% of the word count. (The, and, to, a, was, of, in, I, he, that, his)

• Continuing surprise: It takes 283 words to cover 50% of the total word count.

• Not so surprising: the word “virtue” occurs only once. (page x)

• H4 inmate known to maximum number of hostelites: Blacky, the dog.

• Most popular genre of stories: Individual idiosyncrasies followed by EPs.

• Harsha Bhogle’s favourite story: The elephant story on page 58.

• Geet Sethi’s favourite story: Prickly Times on page 42

• Bachi Karkaria’s favourite stories: Too many to recount here.

• Most unexpected compliment: “You MUST write a wicked book for me” from Shobhaa De

• Amazing coincidence noticed after book publication: Book starts with a story of a bus entering IIT and closes with a story of a bus exiting IIT.

• Duration of ISD calls with Urmilla Deshpande: 300+ hours.

• Announcement made about book deal and soliciting stories: 2-Apr-10

• Last date of receiving stories: 31-May-10

• Number of emails in those 60 days: 401 in Madhouse and 487 private emails.

• Present count of emails in Madhouse: 1890.

• Confirmed fact: No one forgets the name of their roommate or their room number.

• Confirmed fact-2: Very few forget the name of their guide.

• Confirmed fact-3: More forget the name of their steady girlfriend than their favourite mess worker. (as claimed by a few)

• Confirmed fact-4: Most remember all “gaalis”.

• Average rating of all stories by a few self-styled experts (weighted with word count): 7.91