Thank you, Babu!

I know it's been a while since I last blogged (that is an understatement of such enormous magnitude that it's hard to compare it with anything else) and my last post was more than a year ago. But something happened very recently that has prompted me to rethink my blogging career(?!?!) and to become an active blogger again.

But before I do that, I want to tell you folks what happened.

Out of the blue, on Friday last week, I got a very pleasant surprise. A mail from my colleague and buddy from Mumbai was waiting in my inbox. Here's what it said:

From: Babu Ramaswamy

Subject: Hats off

Date: 22 January 2010 3:23:16 PM GMT+05:30

To: Malhar Anaokar

Hi Malhar,

I took some time out last evening and went through your dumping ground ( blogspot )

I started by reading one..then another..then another and in the end i could not leave your page before i finished reading them all... I am really really impressed by your writing...Why have you stopped???

While i was reading blogs under " PROUD FATHER ", i actually could visualize you with your daughter.....While " You are not the boss of the house " brought a smile, reading blogs like " How can i deny this request ", " It's been nine days ", " I am so so proud of her " made my eyes moist.

Admitting to have had " moist eyes " isn't the most macho thing, but i'd be lying if i said that i wasn't blinking back tears when i went through the blogs mentioned above.

You have great skills and i persuade you to continue writing. " The Tiger in town " also shows that your daughter too has the penchant for writing.

Looking forward to reading your short story.

And yes please convey my best wishes to your daughter..

Cheers

Babu"

WOW!

That one completely floored me! This was completely unexpected. I have never expected anyone to read the rubbish that I put up here, much less appreciate it. But more than that, I admired his patience to stay with the blog and to read all the posts. I must have done something right while I was writing them…which brings me to this post.

Dear Babu, this one is dedicated to you! Thank you once again for the very kind and encouraging words and for making me blog again. I will try to be a more sincere and regular blogger henceforth, mainly because you have set the bar so high with your praise that I fear I may not live up to it. But I will try nonetheless. So here goes…to you, my friend, for helping me get on the blogger's path again.

So what's been happening all this while that I have not posted? Quite a few things, actually. So let me see if I can get a few up here…

1. The company that I work for has been acquired. So we are all waiting for the legalities to get done and see what the future holds.

2. I entered in a short story writing competition last year, did not win, but was told that my story was one of the few in contention and that they would like to publish it as part of an anthology. And so, just like that, my second publishing opportunity! The first one you can read about here.

3. I have started going to a guitar class for the first time in my life. After scratching on the strings for all these years, I finally decided that I will learn it like every other sane person on the planet. And I realized I have the B and F chords! :-)

4. Golf has been one roller coaster ride. A few of us in the office started tracking our scores religiously and saw our handicaps drop significantly. Last I checked on our tracking system, I was down to 9.7! And then disaster struck…I could not understand what I was doing wrong. Until last week…when I shot 10 consecutive pars! A personal record!

5. Schumi is back to Formula 1 and my interest in the sport is back. What had become a really boring sport that I pretty much ignored will be my weekend attraction starting March. Go Schumi, Go!

6. Photography as a passion has grown manyfold over the last year, especially since the acquisition of the Nikon D90, a dream of a camera. Have clicked more than 8000 images so far with it, and many more with the iPhone camera and am seeing my passion growing as I start understanding the technicalities of photography. Let's see where this goes in the future.

That's what I can remember so far. And since I am planning to post regularly, as I remember, I will keep adding on.

Once again, thanx a lot for getting me started again, Babu.

Beer is on me the next time we meet! :-)