4 years of blogging!

Yup – 4 years! To celebrate my 4-year blogging anniversary, I migrated my WordPress-hosted wordpress.ulaar.com blog to ulaar.com. I’m sure it’s an event the blogosphere’s been looking forward to with joyous anticipation but guy… don’t know how to break it you… I’m not doing any press interviews. And yeah – don’t send any TV crews either (especially those with Burkha Dutt imitators).

If you really must know where I do most of my blogging, here’s a hint. Koramangala. There are a lot of coffee shops in Koramangala though. Not as many as within a quarter mile radius of a Los Angeles or Manhattan neighborhood..but close.

I’ve also been known to blog from my car as I wait to pick up my son from his school or art class. You may not know which car I drive or which school my sons go to. Then again, you might have read Hum do humare do… bina exhaust ke, this drama-in-real-life The Janus Man, or The curious case of the traveling chairman.

Now that I’ve cleared the air on how you can’t easily find me in Koramangala, let me share some blog statistics and highlight some other posts.

My blogging journey started with A time to Qik on Feb 8, 2008. The 2nd post (Etymology of ulaar) followed soon enough. Things kinda languished for a few months until the primary Returning to India meme emerged in May 2008. Why are we moving back to India now remains an all-time popular post; a more recent guest post by Vasantha Gullapalli, Our Return Ticket 16 Years Later, was another widely read post on the R2I meme.

It took me 2 years to reach the magic milestone of 50 posts. Fittingly, post #50 was The Art of Returning to India, which also marked the change of my blog’s tagline from Return to accustomed earth to The Art of Returning to India…and Staying Put.

The darndest things you see in India photo blog post was one of the largest traffic drivers in 2010. It also garnered a modicum of fame when BlogAdda, an Indian blog network, featured it as a Spicy Saturday pick.

The 100 post milestone was crossed in Feb 2011 (a speedy 12 months compared to the previous 50). Post #100, As I shuttled between San Francisco and Bangalore in 2010, was on the troubling topic of homelessness. In a coincidental way, this post can be considered as a segue to my new TechSangam blog, which I started in March 2011.

TechSangam’s inspiration (and first) post was Evolution of the Human Race. It took a mere 8 months for TechSangam to hit the 100 post milestone. Comparing TechSangam (official blog) with ulaar (personal blog) is not fair since the former was supposed to be a full-time gig. Unsurprisingly, the blog cadence on ulaar suffered in the first 6 months of TechSangam’s evolution but it started picking up steam in Sep 2011. The ulaar blog is now batting n.o. at 137 (including today’s post) and TechSangam is batting at 133. Gotta keep a healthy competition between the two… are you listening, Dr. Jekyl?

Closing Note: This post was conceived on Feb 7 and written in fits and spurts on Feb 9 (today) – first in a Costa Coffee, then in front of my son’s school, followed by a brief session in Au Bon Pain, and a briefer session on a tree-lined Koramangala street. I’m hitting the Publish button in the comfort of my home office. Boy! it’s been a hot February day.