I also read his philosophy of rating of books he reads. Somehow an idea of leaving those books unrated that fall in the rating or 1 or 2 on a scale of 5 would project a wrong picture to his fan following. That is just my personal view. S. V. Divvaakar is an engineering grad from IIT Delhi. He is a specialist in monitoring and evaluation thereby associated with a number of international firms for the same. His latest passions are becoming a well-established writer and public speaker. He seems to carry multiple talents and an art of acquiring new ones. His association with music is known among his circles for his talent in singing, composing music and playing on the keyboard. Blogging is one of his keen interests.
Beaten By Bhagath! A Tale of Two Writers is much beyond the tale of two writers. Besides teaching you some real life lessons, the book also gives you a deep insight of publication industry and the struggle a new writer has to undergo for his survival. Many of the new writers die their own sweet death with all their years of efforts for writing their books going into dust and reaching directly to kabadiwalas or the waste paper/ books collectors. In any trade or profession, there are two kinds of people - one, who compete with nobody except themselves, and the others, who in a madness of competing with others - lose all talent and charm of their life. The same happens in this beautifully written book Beaten By Bhagath! A Tale of Two Writers by S V Divvaakar where the two young guys Ketan Sarvadaman Bhagath (K-10) and Balwant Bhagath (B B) step into a college as freshers and share the same hostel room for their first year.
Both of them become good friends right in their first year, undergo pains of ragging, fight together against senior students who ragged them in teaching them a lesson for their life, and gradually complete their studies to move ahead in different directions of building up their career and family life. Ketan (K-10) always seemed to carry a larger content of life and having a bigger vision as compared to B B. Post their college life, K-10 becomes an established writer of national and international fame within no time. Though B B also gets settled in his professional life in a good MNC but somehow a new stupid feeling emerged in him of becoming a writer and beating K-10 in this trade by becoming a better writer than him.Probably that was the biggest mistake of his life - going into a new trade - but with a wrong mission. And then a new journey of troubles and mistakes starts disturbing both - his family - and professional life and also impacting on his finances. His bank balance starts lowering, his personal relationships with his wife becoming sour and his professional life deteriorating - just for the sake of his passion of writing his first book and then spending a lot in promoting it to get a larger readership. But in this vicious circle of a new book, low volume printing, no stakeholding by publishers and getting buyers, B B starts loosing his money, patience and almost everything he had earned in his life.
Overall an interesting read with some good amount of valuable lessons by the time you are at the verge of finishing this less than 200 pages novel.
