I remember the time when I started the site on June 1st 1999. People who knew what I was doing and people on different discussion groups warned me that the difficult times would start after three to six months. Typically, most online journals/writing sites disappear once the initial enthusiasm is over and the writer/author realizes how much hard work regular weekly or daily updates involve.

I managed to persist beyond the first six months pretty easily. The problems started around June/July this year. The twins needed more attention, work suddenly went haywire and the other professional sites that I was managing needed a lot of attention. With only twenty-four hours at hand, seven of which go in sleeping and twelve at work, I am left with only five hours for other things. Of these, an hour goes with the twins, another half to one hour goes during dinner and with the family and the rest of the hours just disappear before I can even say "Man From Matunga".

I know I am whining and cribbing? Do you care? I don't know.

But I do! I have invested a lot of time and hard work dusting off my writing cobwebs, getting this site up and noticed and developing a regular readership, to even think of giving it up now!

I have always wanted to write. For those of you who don't know and haven't guessed yet, I am a successful and reasonably well-known doctor, specializing in radiology. I entered medicine because that was the thing to do in those days (early eighties). During my undergraduate days I was able to continue with my passion for writing by editing the weekly newsmagazine. But once I entered post-graduate studies, everything stopped. The years of residency, post-residency fellowships and early practice were so demanding that even the distinction between night and day was blurred at times. Forget about doing anything else, even contacts with close family and friends suffered. It took me twelve years after starting my residency in 1988 to finally reach a stage where I could start thinking of doing something else.

And I immediately gravitated to writing. The world however had changed considerably by then, i.e. in the last four years. The Internet is now a part of our lives, communication channels have been revolutionized with email and mobile phones and I could do away with the need to approach traditional publishers. I decided to be my own publisher, by putting my work up on my site for everyone to read and access at all times. With some basic knowledge of HTML I was ready to roll.

And I did what I wanted to! I had the site up by myself, I wrote and posted and developed a reasonable readership and things were going fine until last month when everything almost came undone.

Thanks to Diwali, after a long time, I have two days off this weekend and time to ruminate. And I have decided that come what may, I am not willing or ready to give "manfrommatunga" up. Not now, not ever!

Which means for better or for worse, I will make sure that I have a piece, a satire, an essay, a review or some critique up every week with unfailing regularity. This is a promise I am making first to myself and then to you.

So please communicate! Tell me how I am doing. Criticize, appreciate, sneer, praise...just don't be indifferent. Feedback is important to me. It energizes me, stimulates me and makes me feel that there is someone out there taking the trouble to read what I have written.

So with due respects to Celine Dion and the Beatles, "with a little help from my friends", I am confident that ...my site will go on...and on...

And I wish all of you a Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year!