In the middle of a completely unexciting so-late-night that it was almost early morning, when I had to be at work on a Sunday, when I had absolutely nothing to do apart from making my presence known to the people while laying leisurely in the chair, listening to music with eyes half closed while the open part surveyed the imaginary circles drawn by the crossed legs, refusing to let the mind out for its walk and pee all over the past, my phone screamed. Not being unused to odd hour calls I was hardly amused but for number displaying being unknown at odd hour certainly increases the mercury in me. However I picked the call and was brought back to normalcy when the caller turned out to be a friend. Stick to cell phones I preached always. Few nocturnal species do not give a hoot. Anyways as she asked me to write a pressing piece for her by 6ish for Mid-Day on a topic whatever-you-feel-like, I could not care for anything else. She knew I was her saving grace at the moment when everything gets defunct.

I wasn’t in a mood to power on the machine I had been looking whole previous day. But I wasn’t left with a choice. Many would agree that once you get online you feel like doing thousand things. Now that I was online, I thought lets login to G-mail/G-talk. Ok, now let’s login to Orkut. Requests accepted and rejected, scraps replied. Move on. IBNlive.com, browsed through. Same old news. They haven’t updated it. Next refuge is Rediff.com. Click on movies. Search for Raja Sen’s latest biased review on the latest release and head straight for the comments to see if he has replied to people's comment. I never commented in his space neither I had rediff ID ever. I just used to read all the comments posted by people. Ok, for the uninitiated Raja is/was (?) reviewer on Rediff for latest releases and he writes/wrote well. I was regular to his reviews and read all comments and observed the interaction those souls of all varieties indulged themselves is. My only source of fun on internet other than reading E-Novels was to scan through Raja’s space. I was his fan and also hated him for its biased opinions. His review on the last Friday release to that unexciting Sunday morning was creating ruckus and I had joined the bandwagon too. I chanced upon a comment left by another film enthusiast taking Raja to task and ending the comment with line that is embarked in my memory: “Raja, what you have written here is a trash and if you want to know how reviews are written, I invite you to read my review on same on Mouthshut.com” and followed was a link.

I clicked and entered this world and became a part of it ever since that unexciting Sunday morning brought me here last year on 13th May, 2007. I had never heard of this site. No, I did not notice it behind auto which I was told by many members when asked how they got to know of this site. I am often asked how you could not be aware of it. I often wonder how?

As I was writing long before I got to know, after creating the profile I pasted my work one by one same day and the next day too. I did not know the happenings here and was happy to see my name taking away all the places on home page. I told myself, Wow, this is interesting. The first person who spoke to me was Usman (ID was JBZ7879, heard he is been kicked out after many abuses hurled upon him), he asked how come I am writing so many so soon and few others asked too. I replied this is my saved old work and am just pasting under the respective category as all of them were movie reviews. I could never write on anything other than movies. I also remember when I posted my first review (Bheja Fry), I went and commented in my own review that as this is my first review on this site, I am pampering myself by putting comment in my own review. Gosh, I was so naïve.

However I confess I am as excited about it today as I was that day. In a long time, I was in a moment when I was alone and not lonely, without work and not worried, at peace and smiling to myself as the slow summer breeze whistled through the window. I look back at the year gone by and I feel the same I felt on that unexciting Sunday morning. I am happy and I am at peace.

P.S. I never went back to Raja's space as I find MS much better and reviews here are mostly unbiased.