Any batsmen worth his salt will tell you, that the most disconcerting and nerve-wrecking time at the crease is not when one opens the innings, but when the personal score is in the edgy 90s. More so, if it is 99; just a single required to cross over into the triple digit club of 100. Usually most falter that this very edge, even the mighty and so do the lowly. That’s the power of 100, it can daunt anyone. But, if you do manage to cross into the club. It is a indeed a very exhilarating experience. The feeling of being a centurion!

Thus, eversince I saw my WordPress Dashboard tell me that I had 99 posts on this blog, I was stumped. It was a great a feeling to know that in spite of all the odds, the biggest one being my own laziness and tardiness, I have indeed managed to somehow keep this one venture of mine alive, when so many others have vanished in the realms of time.

So, when it dawned on me that, I too will be a centurion blogger, namely, who has written 100 odd posts, I was all caught up in thought. It took me many many days to decide on what would be that 100th post. Since, it was to be special, I thought that I’d indeed make it very special. So, I begin thinking over it, should it be my favorite published article – but then there aren’t many of them, or should it be an unpublished one – there are just so many of them. Should it be a feature, comment, short story, interview, etc. I just kept ruminating over it.

Every passing day, whenever I would find some free time on my hand I would think on that special 100th post. It almost took me a month before I realised that in the process of trying to make my post special, I was steadily returning to my old self, wherein there is much thought and little action. Like a bolt it hit me that the 100th post will not be special because of its structure or form, but simply because it is 100th. Nothing more and little else.

So this is my 100th post, and it kind of is an announcement of my committment to shashwatdc.com.

And like all good things that have a beginning, I thought I will indulge in a little bit of history at this juncture, thank a few people and lay the record straight for posterity to come.

Well, the seeds of this blog was laid back in 2001, when I being completely completely frustated with my editor at FE, who would not let me write feature stories. Decided to launch my own website, wherein I would find a space to put up all that I want and desired. And so Anonymuncle.com came intoexistence in those years. A brief description that was put up on the site back then clearly sets out the path for a petty, useless, writer like me.

Welcome to my world, my place in the milky way galaxy. Anonymuncle is an extinct word succinctly describing `a petty useless writer’. I empathasize and understand the psyche of anonymuncle, as I happen to be one at the moment, unheard of and unread. Last but not the least I love its phonetical result. I am writer, not very talented one considering the geniuses that have traversed this earth before and are doing so now. But every writer yearns for an opportunity to be able to present his thought and his visions undented by the deft hand of an editor. Working in a newspaper is an exasperating experience, one has to adhere to many said and many more unsaid principles. Frustration and despondency thus usually encumber people desiring to vent their views and this was the state of affairs when anonymuncle gave me a ray of life and thus enlivened my life.

This place I wont be mincing words or hiding behind their veil, if I wish to say fuck I will say FUCK and not something like fcuk or ****. There are articles that have been published in `The Free Press Journal’ where am currently employed as a journalist and chiefly the articles that can’t be published anywhere. Blabberama is equivalent to rantings of a nutcase but the rantings are not devoid of meaning, even being non-sensical there is a serious undercurrent, if you can discern it. Not Such a Long time ago will chronicle the changing lifestyle from my eyes and my experiences. Eyes Wide open is my opinion of the current world, a tumultuous world on war with itself. The articles will be updated as frequently as they are creatively possible and I hope that whoever reads these articles in exception to myself and my near-dear ones will get a point of view in the matters that I discuss and my success lies in providing this alternate thought for your rumination.

The thoughts expressed in the articles are mine and I am solely responsible for my views however audacious they might happen to be.

Welcome to my world, my place in the milky way galaxy. Anonymuncle is an extinct word succinctly describing `a petty useless writer’. I empathasize and understand the psyche of anonymuncle, as I happen to be one at the moment, unheard of and unread. Last but not the least I love its phonetical result. I am writer, not very talented one considering the geniuses that have traversed this earth before and are doing so now. But every writer yearns for an opportunity to be able to present his thought and his visions undented by the deft hand of an editor. Working in a newspaper is an exasperating experience, one has to adhere to many said and many more unsaid principles. Frustration and despondency thus usually encumber people desiring to vent their views and this was the state of affairs when anonymuncle gave me a ray of life and thus enlivened my life.

This place I wont be mincing words or hiding behind their veil, if I wish to say fuck I will say FUCK and not something like fcuk or ****. There are articles that have been published in `The Free Press Journal’ where am currently employed as a journalist and chiefly the articles that can’t be published anywhere. Blabberama is equivalent to rantings of a nutcase but the rantings are not devoid of meaning, even being non-sensical there is a serious undercurrent, if you can discern it. Not Such a Long time ago will chronicle the changing lifestyle from my eyes and my experiences. Eyes Wide open is my opinion of the current world, a tumultuous world on war with itself. The articles will be updated as frequently as they are creatively possible and I hope that whoever reads these articles in exception to myself and my near-dear ones will get a point of view in the matters that I discuss and my success lies in providing this alternate thought for your rumination.

The thoughts expressed in the articles are mine and I am solely responsible for my views however audacious they might happen to be.

And so the journey started. Over the next year or so, I fastidiously put up my articles on the website and kept on going till I was completely caught in the inanities of life and anonymuncle died a lonely death. Also, the fact was that in those days I was not even earning sufficiently well enough to be able to afford the domain name rentals. Result, I defaulted and within a few days or so, the name was snapped by a cyber squatter. Honestly speaking, I still miss anonymuncle and wish someday I will be able to grab it back.

A few years later, the whole phenomenon of blogging came to life thanks to Blogger and the likes. In those days, I too started quite a few blogs of mine, but could never really sustain them. The ones that I did manage to carry a bit was shashwatdc.blogspot.com and shashwatdc.wordpress.com.

Since, I was a writer, I felt the need for a sort of portfolio, where in I can put up my published pieces, sort of preening exercise. Subsequently, thanks to my friend Ajay Sartape, I finally shifted to my own domain name shashwatdc.com in 2007.  The first post on this blog was on June 6, 2007, an article published in the Dataquest magazine, on saving the Royal Bengal Tiger. So, it took me around 2 years to reach the coveted century.

While, I am a great fan of the Google analytics tool, and used it on my previous blogs to get insights on the user patterns, due to numerous odd reasons, Google Analytics tool was not enabled on shashwatdc.com till about July 2008. Even then, due to plugin issues, the data on my website used to blackout for days at end, while I would either grapple with new plugins or cajole Ajay into helping me out.

Nonetheless, let me present a small snapshot of details as thrown up by Google Analytics tool from the time it started evaluating the traffic to the website (July 2008). Here it goes:

Total Visitors: 3356

Pageviews: 6,304

New Visits: 79.89%

Search Traffic Source:61.98%

Direct Traffic Source: 27.71%

Referring Sites Source: 10.31%

Top Page: Interview with G Madhvan Nair (ISRO)

Top 5 search keywords: ego cogito, isro interview, shashwatdc green, ego cogito ergo sum and georgia shashwat dc

Top 5 countries for traffic: India, US, UK, Canada, Australia

I even had a few visits from places like; Saint Kitts and Nevis, Ghana, Moldova, Honduras, Bhutan and Gautemala.

This is how matters stand at the moment. I am well aware that my audience is limited and I can’t really make big money (rather any money) based on the above statistics. But, I am also very very happy that there is quite a few people out there in the vast cyber world who have taken the trouble to read my pieces, so to all those 3356 visitors and the ones before July 2008, thank you so so very much. Believe me for a writer there is no greater reward than his piece being read, and I am so happy that there were some 3000 odd who chose to read mine.

Behind every success, it is said, there are always a few that made it so. For me there are basically two, number one: Ajay Sartape, who was there with me when Anonymuncle was born (in fact he was the surrogate mother) and is there with me today with shashwatdc.com and greenitindia.com. He has been very generous with his support be it time or even space on his server. All I can say is that without him, I don’t know if shashwatdc.com would have taken off. Though, we still have quite a handful of unfinished dreams and projects and hopefully someday they too will see the light of the day.

And then, there is Vijetha Chaturvedi, my wife. Who has been quite impatiently patient as I would go about updating my blogs late into the nights. She would often chide me as to what pleasure do I derive from writing the kind of pieces that I do. Indeed she is my best critic (I think all wives are) and I prefer to publish those posts that have been whetted by her. In fact, there are quite a few lying on my hard disk, unpublished, simply because she successfully argued against them. The good thing is that even when though she never really approves of me wasting my ‘sleeping time’ on these blogs, she just lets me do it peacefully. There is subtle encouragement in her stance.

Do excuse me, if I sound as if I am going a wee bit overboard on my 100th post. But believe me, if you knew me the way I know myself, you would have been in 7th heaven on this achievement. And I just hope and pray that I keep on like this and Shashwatdc does not become like so many other ventures I had in the past. Anyways, by the virtue of crossing 99 posts, Shashwatdc.com will always be the most special venture of mine. Call it the perks of scoring a century.

Meet you next at 101. Ciao!