I am stepping onto the second year of blogging today. :) At the end of one year of blogging, I am happy that I started blogging. Since this blog has become an important part of me in the past one year, there is no way I am going to settle for a short post now. :P Here’s looking back at the first year of my blog. ;)

For the first time, I tried to put into writing what I felt on listening to a song or watching a movie or just my views on what was happening around me or some random thoughts and discovered that I too can write something about music, movies, everyday happenings, etc. I tried to make a blog post out of anything and everything that I felt was ‘postable’. ;)

When I wrote my first post (Arvind, instead of publishing my first post once again as a part of your tag, I am linking it now. :P ), I had no clue at all as to what I was going to write about. At that time, the only interesting thing happening was the December Season and for the first time, I tried putting into writing what all I enjoyed/ didn’t enjoy in a concert. But, I was absolutely dissatisfied with what I was writing and told a friend of mine that all I am writing is, the rendition of this song was good or that raaga alapana was excellent, etc. (even now I am doing the same thing only! And the reason why I am not posting regularly about the concerts I attend, is only this. Nowadays, I post about a concert only if I feel like writing about it) I told her that am at a loss of adjectives to use for my posts anymore. :P So much so that I decided that I won’t post anything about the concerts. But, boredom got the better of me and I kept writing posts on the concerts (please don’t refer to those as reviews, simply because, they are not).

That’s when January came and I wanted to write something for the birthday of A.R.Rahman, the only music director whose music had fascinated me like no others’. Call it the turning point or whatever, Prabhu linked my post in his’ (for which I can’t thank him enough since I know, quite a few of my now regular readers came to my blog only through his) and I got the first of the regular readers of my blog, Adiya and Ranjhith (Hell’s Angel – a very close friend of mine, a couple of my friends and my sister were the initial readers of my blog and later, Prabhu too started reading. Don’t know if there were any silent readers ;) ). Very soon, the number of regular readers of my blog started increasing and comments started pouring in, thanks to my posts on A R Rahman and his music and later, my posts on Mani Ratnam’s movies. I owe a big thanks to Mani Ratnam and A R Rahman too! ;) But for my passion for their works, I wouldn’t have written so many posts. Each time I rave about a song or a movie here, I don’t know why, but I find my liking for it increasing even more!

Today, thanks to my blog, I am doing something that I cannot imagine doing in the real world. If I am sitting face to face with say ten people, it will be a long time before I start freely interacting with them. But through my blog, I am doing the unimaginable for me by interacting with so many of you. :) Today, not only are there a lot of readers reading my blog, but a few of them have become good friends of mine too. :) Thanks to my writing about music and Mani Ratnam’s movies, I am getting to interact with many Rahmaniacs, Carnatic music lovers and fans of Mani Ratnam here. I feel that networking through blogs is lot better than through networking sites (one reason being I can restrict the details I give about myself ;) ) and I am enjoying every bit of it. :) Thanks a ton to each one of you for making this happen! :)

At the end of Q4 of this blog, I have decided to stop posting the customary quarterly blog stats from now on. :P Presenting the stats at the end of the first year:

No. of posts: 224
No. of comments: 2342 (including my reply to comments)
Hits: 73727 (sum of the hits of both my old blog as well as this one)

With this, ends my vote of thanks! ;) Thanking each one of you once again! :)