I don't know when or why it happened!
Perhaps it was those years in Engineering days, when I read a few novels, that's also the only time I have read something, and as any other newbie it was all fiction, mostly Christie or McLean or after some influence from the so called elites I read some Grisham and Ludlum, but I always preferred Sheldon over them. So my taste was more for raw kind of novels, with explicit plots, and well defined clear feelings and motives, the subtleties didn't appeal too much to me, and perhaps it's a characteristic of my nature also.
Anyway, I don't recall, when I decided to do this explicitly, but my first blog post dates back to 2006, 3rd or 4th year of college, perhaps I was just trying out something new, riding the blogging wave. But it lasted very briefly. I realized majorly that I had a knack for it, when I was in TCS in 2008, and was preparing for B-School interviews and waiting for calls. PagalGuy was the forum where it came out of me like it was waiting to explode. I read PagalGuy posts for about 2-3 days, and was thinking to myself that these guys (some of who had posted 2-4 thousands of posts), are real big time masters, and for a moment I thought whether or not should I post anything because the guys over there were very thorough with what they said, and I didn't want to get embarrassed by being caught publicly making a mistake. But nevertheless, my first post was against PagalGuy's system of keeping the discussion very focused on the point of discussion, and as a result losing all the fun of interacting with so many really bright people.
As expected the post gained some major criticism and was massively groaned at but then I generated some support from some guys, who could understand what I was saying and that was the start. So I established two things again to myself, I could defy authority and question it at its most basic form, and also I could write and be understood.
Lucky for me both the things held on during the coming times. I think the movie RDB had a huge impact on me and made me think, and realize the importance of questioning and asking and eventually doing whatever it takes to create a difference. It gave me another push to continue to defy present norms and keep challenging things, beliefs.
It came out in various forms, long chats with friends about religion, politics, society, India, my conversion to 1st atheism and then gradually mellowing down to agnostic, the natural inclination towards politics and socialism, the quest to finding paradoxes, problems and intricacies of systems and hence the solutions.
But then as I kept finding problems and solutions I felt I need to do more than just share them with some friends, I thought I needed more visibility, and obviously this part came in after I joined the B-School, and even though there were a lot of things to do during this while, I could still find some time to continue thinking and write whenever I could.
As it stands today, I wish to start a full fledged online campaign, a platform where young people from all walks of life can come together and find practical solutions to real problems, which our country, society, people and environment are facing. I am not sure whether to go for a website straight away, or wait for a while. But I am quite sure this will be a reality soon.
Well if I can use this blog as a platform, it's an open invitation to all serial bloggers and occasional ones, to help me, with what I plan to do. Together we can make this really large, which is also the only way to make it successful, since to be heard is the first step to causing a thought, which only can lead to some action.
