Big B's Blog Completes Eight Years!

Dear Amitji,

Heartiest congratulations on completing eight years of your Blog, by far the biggest newsmaker journal anywhere in the world. From Day 1, till today, it has been the most anticipated, keenly  awaited and quoted page of personal day-to-day diary. Apart from us, your very dear Ef, who are ever so proud to be part of the Blog, people from all walks of life, common man to the VIPs, have shown keen interest in your Blog. I have used the term ‘common man’ here as it is used in common parlance, for which I beg your pardon because I’m quite aware that for you and your family everyone is as special as any VIP or celebrity may consider himself to be.

“Many that have written in, have expressed surprise that I being in an exalted position have considered to talk, metaphorically, to the ‘common man’.

This is unacceptable to me. No one is common. We are all in God’s world ‘special humans’, each one of us. Each one of us has qualities unique and different from others. I do not and certainly not my family, hold any kind of special status. I am as common as the common man, and as special as him too.”

Sir, the above is quoted from your own comments on the Blog of Day 1. You, indeed, are amongst the great men of our times whom G. Chesterton, the world renowned writer-journalist, puts in the category of a great man who makes every man feel extraordinary. We all have  experienced your this quality by having the proud privilege of being part of the Blog for eight years now, on which you have consistently and continuously made us feel every Day that we are no ordinary men and women, but someone extraordinary. I have personal experience of knowing the two other great men with similar quality as yours, Pandit Nehru and Bill Clinton. Pandit Nehru  ignored all other important engagements and appointments to spend quality time with us when I along with my wife and a group of children, ready to leave for Summer Camp organized by the youth organization of Soviet Union along the coast of Black Sea, went to seek his blessings. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton personally replied to all my letters, eight of them, I wrote to him during his presidency on varied topics, which, of course, are my prize possessions.

We all on this prestigious platform, very proud and highly honored to be treated as your Extended Family,  feel overwhelmed when you time and again thank us for being part your family. We are ever so obliged to you for showering praise for just being with you ever since you started writing the Blog, but actually we cannot find words to thank you enough for all the affection and honor you have always bestowed on us through the Blog. How excited and proud  we used to feel finding your much wished ‘golden line’ indicating your appreciation for our comment on your post of the Day. This would, indeed, invariably make our day and personally speaking, I cherish getting  those cheering golden lines at least thrice. Those lines having been replaced now with  written response by Sr Bachchan, besides adding a personal touch, punctuated at times with humor and always with love and affection,  makes us feel you are just one of us joined to participate in our ongoing discussion. What a big deal for us! To give an example, your response to Arshad Khan’s appreciation of ‘salwar’ he saw you wearing in a picture posted on the Blog, made us all smile when you corrected him in your comment that it was a ‘dhoti’ and not ‘salwar’, and he taking it sportingly with his response that then he too must buy such a beautiful ‘dhoti’. It was all so natural that we all felt you were like anyone of us ready to respond the same lighter vein. This type of personal touch is so much in tune with our sensibility that we feel like we are on the seventh heaven. God bless you for being so.

Sir, thinking of about the eight eventful years of the beautiful Blog, so many thoughts come to mind that if one was to pen them down on paper, they could provide material for a must read best seller. May be, if life cooperates, I could make an attempt sometime in future, for the meantime our best wishes to you for many more years of the Blog, that we are addicted to reading, that offer a wonderfully brainy, personal and irreverent way of seeing the world, that encourage us to turn the Blog into a running dialogue amongst your dear Ef, each one eager to be part of that conversation. Wow, what a unique platform you have created, perhaps, the only one of its kind. A big THANKS to you, Sir.

With regards;

Tilak Rishi