- Hi! I am Tejan Dargar, and I have a twin brother named Viren (yes, we do look identical!)… and we are both Chartered Accountants!
- We coincidentally did our articles first at Grant Thronton (audit) and then at BMR in their tax team!
- In early 2019, while managing our full-time, hectic jobs, we decided to write a book to help CA students in their articleship journey!
- And finally, by the end of 2019, we will have already published our book, “How to Mine the Treasure Called Articleship.”
- Here is our story of writing and publishing a book from scratch!
Back Story: Starting our CA Journey
Science was a no-brainer for me (I detested physics), Arts was a no-brainer (who takes Arts with a 94% in 10th grade boards, “log kya kahenge”), and thus the answer is commerce.
The dilemma doesn’t end here; I wanted to do a course that gave me access to college life, so chartered accountancy wasn’t even on my mind!
I studied hard to ensure that I got an admission to the prestigious Sri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi, but God had his own plans… I missed getting admission by a meagre 0.75% and hence took up chartered accounting!
Our Chartered Accountancy journey began with dreading classes; luckily, we cleared the first level of CA exams easily, and by early 2012, we were done with our Intermediate exams!
What Next? We had to start a 3-year internship at a chartered accounting firm!
It was time to figure out what to do regarding articleship—the WHAT was clear, but the HOW had no answer!
Struggling to find answers to articles and a lack of direction
We knew nothing about the firms we should be applying to, the kind of questions that the interviewer would ask, or the skills and competencies that were expected of us.
So began the process of frantically calling up school seniors, relatives, professors, and professional contacts.
Some of them did not have the time, and most of them did not care to understand the situation and lend proper advice.
Some of them who cared to advise did so in a piecemeal fashion, sharing just their own opinions; none had a comprehensive answer, an answer that would give a 360-degree solution to our problem.
We felt a dire need for a Chanakya who could help us sail through this difficult and most important career decision in life!
What Next?
Eventually, by asking around for guidance, we managed to figure out a few things!
Viren and I both applied at Grant Thornton and got selected for their audit team. It was super exciting as well as overwhelming!
Overwhelming because of the transition from school/classes to a global corporate setting in a plush office with formal attire, well-mannered behavior, and rigorous boardroom discussions!
In the second year of our articles, Viren moved to BMR, and guess what? I was also called for an interview and finally got selected.
We experienced life-changing moments working there. It was a journey of mixed feelings and ups and downs.
Sometimes we would be exalted for super performance, and sometimes we would complain about forgetting the facts of the case in hand!
Others were preparing financials; we were writing a book. Why?
Fast forward to 2018, I shared my article experience on The CA Story, and we got a lot of questions on the same! You can find the article here.
CA students wanted to know: how did we apply to GT and BMR; what was our experience working there; how could they also grow and learn in their articles; etc.
It was fun helping and guiding students, but again, it was very time-consuming! So I thought, “Why not write a book and share all of this in a book?”
And that’s how the idea of writing a complete guide to articleship was born.
Synergies of two creative minds resulted in the birth of a book!
My brother, Viren, was doing his MBA from IIM Lucknow while I was working in the demanding world of finance. Therefore, we made sure that we wrote the content on weekends.
There were certain sections that I had more exposure to due to my experience in the corporate world, while Viren adequately highlighted the learnings from his student life.
We would talk on the phone about what should be written, drawing on each other’s insights. We would both write content and get it validated by each other. There were two minds working on the same idea.
We also spoke to many articleship aspirants (including my sister) to understand the issues at the grass-roots level.
We had discussion sessions with partners and managers in CA firms about their perspective on articleship and what kind of attitude or learning change they seek in the articles they train. Hence, this book carries perspectives from all the relevant stakeholders in a student’s articleship journey.
The idea was to incorporate everything in the book such that no questions are left unanswered, and hence we call the book “A Complete Guide to CA Articleship.”
Finally, we wrote and published the book in 2019!
The book is made available at a very affordable price (Rs 99, i.e., lower than the price of a movie ticket) so that it reaches the maximum number of readers.
Do you want to write a book? Here are some tips.
1. Define a structure for the book or articles that you wish to write.
- It is called structuring your thoughts so that they can be put into the form of organized content. For instance, our book is organized into chapters, each chapter addressing one specific question or aspect of CA articleship.
- The chapters have been structured to address the chronology of questions that come to an aspirant’s mind.
- For example, the first question that any aspirant would ask is, “What is the importance of articleship and why should three important years of my CA career be dedicated to it?”
2. Keep the language easy; jargon is passé!
- The more simple yet effective the language, the better it will be for the readers.
- The language of our book is very fluid, and we have tried to keep the book-reading experience very interesting through the use of real-life illustrations, charts, relevant quotes from famous personalities, anecdotes, etc.
- One of the friends with whom I interned at BMR told me that when she was reading the book, she felt as if it were a time machine that had transported her back in time to the days when she was pondering over articleship and her articleship days.
3. The million-dollar question: marketing the book
- The mere idea is not enough. It should be implemented and marketed. We had the idea for the book, wrote the book, and it was required to be properly marketed so that it benefits the maximum audience.
- We are currently marketing this book through our connections on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and our professional network.
- The idea is to use this book as an investment for a strong foundation for your career.
4. Find people with the same objective.
- The way to work in this competitive world is through joint efforts!
- Find people who share the same vision and understand how you can mutually help each other to meet the desired objective.
- We collaborated with a lot of CA coaching classes, CA firms, etc. to help our book reach the right audience!
Should you also write a book?
“If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it.” This quote by Beverly Cleary was the guiding force behind this book.
However, writing a book demands a lot of time and effort; hence, you should have a flair for writing!
Also, for writing, you need to read a lot so that you understand how to structure a book. Blogging may give you an edge in writing and help you experiment with different styles of writing.
