An year gone by ...

On 13th March 2006, in a moment of extreme frustration, mental unrest, self-hate and many other such emotions, I first decided to put hand to keyboard.

A complete solar revolution has happened since, and I am 1 year old on this blogspace.
I know that, what is written here is not of any literary importance & doesnt mean anything to anyone but me, but it means the world to me.

The blog stemmed out of a long bottled up urge to scream out at the IIT system, at my friends, at the power hierarchies of this college that :: let me be myself and just f*ck off into nothingness. I am not too sure, that the release is complete. I am not too sure whether it mattered, but one thing is sure that - this blog allows me to be myself.
Whether someone reads it or doesnt is immaterial, because this is a place where I am closed to review & criticism. Its an equivalent of biking down Marine Lines at 90Kmph in the dead of the night without a helmet - never thinking twice about any damn thing in the world, be it the signals, the police, the law, the road or its potholes. Its just about feeling the wind through your hair and defiance in your blood. If there are additional rain droplets and/or a girl on the pillion, I couldnt ask for anything else in the world.
Blogging is about a similar personal ecstacy!

As a result, you could say that I am senti about my blog. Sitting comfortably cross-legged on a couch, at home with laptop on my laps and writing a blog at unearthly hours is something I always wanted to do - and coincidentally I am doing this for the first time on this occasion.

With an year gone by, I wonder what all has changed. Nothing at the face of it. I am still as angry, much more confused, as much a lazy-bum & most of my posts are still post-midnight.
But the last year has been a year of great learning and experiences.

I turned 20. I decided that I would first say things about growing up, when the pangs of turning 20 first hit me on Sudeep's Bday. Then again, I was practically shaking when the bike-ride from Eesha's midnight cake-party to IIT allowed me time to think of how much turning 20 means and how little it seems. I ended up scaring her as much.
I have a draft of all that I wanted to say - on my 20th Bday & never could till then. I never got around to publishing that as well.
Each time, i realised that writing about growing up - isnt a night's work.

The year has been marked by endless nightouts discussing friendship, relationships, marriage, parenting, life, career - rather the challenges of each one of them.

It was an year of taking up challenges and failing in them. The spectacular banding of Speakers' Club sophies and as spectacular failure of the idea will haunt me for quite some time. That thing hurt me very deep, because I had put in a real fight to pull that idea off. Just that there werent enough freebies/incentives to be handed out at each point of time. Yet it was an year, when I realised that given a responsibility I can execute it well & that I can be entrusted with things.

Last year, I discovered that the joys of having a hang-out group far outweigh the transience of hopping from one group to another and exchanging pleasantries with them. I really need to write about all my friends one-of-these days and establish the role they play in maintaining my sanity.

Bike was such a crucial cog in the year gone by, that I dedicated a seperate blog to my passion. [Though I cant say, I do justice to it]. Airport, SakiNaka, Juhu Beach, Parel & Pune.

This was the year of THE 5th SEM, of persistent segmentation faults, core-dumps, of reliving the joy of being in CSE, of a week in Bangalore, of MSR, Google, of OSL, of Coffee & Biscuits, of Maddu and Jalebis.

It was of persistence through asking times, cribbing in every blog post.
It was of blogging, when the mind runs out of ideas & of blogging, when the mind is full of them, of blogging, when the mind seeks shelter & blogging, when the mind reports adventure.

It was an year of the Blog My Blog !