Blogging was in its infancy when I started my blog in 2004. A busy working mom of two school going kids, I had my moments of frustration and monotony. I use to get tremendous solace in the arms of my blog. Likeminded bloggers automatically formed their groups and and lots of good vibes flowed through comments. E-books were exchanged, queries were answered, some fellow bloggers got married and some became parents. Joy as well as pain buried in the hearts were shared. Virtual joys reflected in real life too. Instead of responding to crafty co-workers' tactics, I preferred to think about the lovely response by a celebrity blogger on my post. Oblivion of a few negative elements around me, I waited for the lovely posts by my fellow bloggers.
I also visited a certain Indian investment banker's blog who was based in Hong kong. He posted the pics of his adorable twins and mentioned his book. Bloggers knew about his book before the real world. I think he was the first person to get benefitted by this medium. He commanded the same respect as any IIT plus IITM grad does in India. I never commented in his blog and he might have never visited mine, but as he was from blogging fraternity and I had an IIT connection so, I bought the book and liked it. I was happy for him when FPS did well. It had all the salable ingredients in it.The book was more of a business acumen rather than a creative wonder. Everyone liked him. Neither was he a threat to anyone nor he was mortifying anybody's pride. But, the gigantic success of his book, rather books changed everything.
After more than four bestsellers and two movies based on them, Bhagat became the hero of masses. A lot of developments have happened since then. Now he writes columns for a couple of publications. Bhagat and his books are always mocked by elites. Macaulay's Downwards Filtration Theory didn't work here which says any trend comes down to general people from higher class people. Jealousy seems natural as what he earned in less than a decade others cannot hope to do in a long time.
In all these years I have read more about Bhagat than written by him. I review caught my eye because it was written by Pritish Nandi in a magazine. The review was a good piece of writing. Not that I claim to be a critic myself, but it had a good flow. I began reading it and stopped only in the end. It had economics of the book, which he could only admire. It had humour, sarcasm and humiliating stuff too in abundance .Years of experience and toil results in such prose, which we readers love. Nandi had wasted it for such a petty cause, sigh! Recently I was pained to see a post by one of my fav writers telling us how Bhagat is a moron and what all he doesn't know and what all he could do with his qualifications. I reached his page to read one more beautiful travelogue or column and not all this.
Bhagat has written books which gave immense pleasure to a large number of people. He made them read who never read an English novel before. So give him his due. The latest is that Bhagat is trending on Twitter and FB for a wrong reason. Why give him so much importance. Many, many others celebrities post foolish things. They are forgiven after getting chided for a day or two. But this time his crime is grave. He tried to become the biggest bhagat of our PM who has divided our country into two parts in terms of lovers and haters.
