I was offline for the last two weeks. I live in a part of town (in Pune, India) that is newly devel­op­ing. All the res­i­den­tial phone lines in our area have been down for so many days. Broad­band didn’t work. Roads are dug up by any tom, dick, and harry, for what­ever rea­son, and no one knows why. Some cables were seem­ingly affected, and that brought all the phone lines down. The tele­phone repair­men work­ing at the spot looked either like gang­sters try­ing to hide some loot, or a group of men squat­ting to uri­nate at a wall. This is the devel­op­ing India. Sigh!

The com­ments and responses on this blog dur­ing and after the pro­longed delays have hum­bled me. When I started this blog, I never knew and never expected to make so many friends or develop such a read­er­ship. I am still taken aback by the entire expe­ri­ence. One of my blog­ger friends even traced me, got my cell phone num­ber, and called me up to ask what’s the mat­ter, and that (s)he didn’t want to lose a friend like me. Expe­ri­ences and com­ments like these make one real­ize that one is not alone in this world. There are peo­ple who care about the same things you do, who think in a sim­i­lar fash­ion, who value sim­i­lar things like you, and that the world is not such a hope­less place after all. I can­not express how hum­bled I am at all the emails and com­ments I received.

I am try­ing my best to put my life in order, such that I will be able to devote some more time to blog­ging. I have been dragged into sev­eral things on the per­sonal front, and deal­ing with all of them at the same time has been a chal­lenge. But the won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of blog­ging — the inter­ac­tion I’ve been hav­ing with you folks — edu­cated, intel­li­gent, sen­si­tive, and insight­ful — is a reward­ing expe­ri­ence that I don’t wish to sac­ri­fice. So I am myself wait­ing to get active in the blo­gos­phere again. The only request is to be patient with me.

At the same time, I am also miss­ing out on read­ing your won­der­ful blog posts. I can­not tell you how many times I think of some of your posts while sleep­ing at night, and either have a good laugh or empathize with your feel­ings, or be enriched by your knowl­edge­able posts. I am look­ing for­ward to get­ting back to read­ing your blogs and learn­ing from them. You folks make life worth­while. I mean it.

This post is not com­posed, orches­trated, or edited. The back­space or arrow keys haven’t been used. It is com­ing straight from the heart, as they say, and there is no fil­ter. For­give me if it is not as struc­tured as my usual posts. I know you will. Thank you.