Thank you for reading

Exactly one year ago (5th March 2012) I posted my first post on my blog. It's hard to believe that one year has already passed since I started writing this blog. This journey so far has been quite an enjoyable and fulfilling experience for me. When I started this blog, I didn't know how long I would continue writing. I never knew what topics I would discuss. I only knew that I wanted to share my views on various topics with others and was interested to know others' views also and wanted to have a healthy dialogue. The blog survived for one year and it is still going strong. Today is the first anniversary of my blog and I want to celebrate it with all my readers, critiques, and well-wishers because you all are the people who helped me to come this far.

First of all, I want to thank all my readers for their time and encouragement. Readers from all over the world visit my blog and I am really thankful to all of them. I also want to express my gratitude to all my friends and family members who encouraged me to write and instilled the confidence in me that was required to start this adventure. Without their support and encouragement, this blog would not have come into existence. We all discuss various topics with our friends and family members and express our concerns and opinions on almost all issues but rarely do we think that we should share it with a wider audience. Previously it was difficult to share as mediums like blogs or social media like Facebook were not available but now it has become really easy to share our thoughts with others and this is the major reason we see so many blogs by so many people who want to share their ideas and opinions. I was also inspired by this phenomenon and was thinking of starting my own blog sometime at the beginning of last year but was hesitant to start for a few reasons. First of all, English is not my first language and I was wondering if the topics that interest me or trouble me will also interest or appeal to others or not. But my friends especially Vishnu encouraged me to write and this blog was started. I don't worry anymore about my English because I know that there are many people like me who speak and write very simple English which is not written or spoken in conventional literary style but it serves the purpose. The main intention here is to share thoughts with others and language is only a medium and I am sure that my language is pretty simple and clear to understand.

To my great surprise blog was mentioned in one of the very popular Marathi daily newspapers Loksatta (लोकसत्ता) in a section "वाचावे नेटके (Wachave Netake)" which can be translated as "something good to read," and the author said very good things about the blog. He said that language is simple to understand, topics are socially relevant and thoughts are presented in a very clear and non-provocative manure. I was not aware of this article and came across it very accidentally and it was a pleasant surprise for me. Along with this praise, the blog received some criticism as well, I found it was mentioned as an "anti-Hindu" blog on some Yahoo group's message board. That message has been deleted from this group for some reason after I wrote a post about this rare honor some time back. Some readers also criticized some of my opinions and I tried to answer all their concerns and doubts to the best of my abilities. All these discussions and debates are there to read for everybody in the comments section of the blog. Some of them are very interesting, maybe more interesting than the post itself and I recommend readers interested in those topics to go through them if they have enough time to spare because some of them are really lengthy.

I share my blog posts on some other platforms like the Speaking Tree section of Times of India and on my Facebook page where I get to interact with many other blog writers and readers who don't visit this blog. Blog writing and interacting with my readers on various platforms has been a very rewarding and satisfying experience for me. I enjoyed it a lot and I hope that readers of my blog also enjoyed it. I wish to continue this journey as long as I enjoy it. I learned a lot and hope that people reading my views also got something useful from my blog posts. Many of the issues that I discuss on my blog are very serious and complicated. I know that it will take more than just a blog post to deal with them but this is an attempt from my side to initiate a thought process in people's minds and I hope it will generate some interest and awareness about these issues. Even if few people get inspired to do something different and good I think the purpose of writing this blog is served.

Thanks for reading and please keep on reading and sharing your thoughts.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)

Reference:
1. Loksatta link
2. My blog at Speaking tree
3. Some of my old posts on Speaking Tree
4. Two most popular posts from blog: Chanakya and his views about women;
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