For my 50th post, I planned to write on anonymous blogging. On how it is at once exciting and exacting. Exciting because you can say anything and nobody sues you because nobody is bothered anyway.  Exacting because by nature I’m very open and it doesn’t feel good to hide behind anonymity. Also,  I’m getting slightly worried about someone in the family chancing upon my blog. And there’s the guilt factor to deal with – some of my acquaintances have read this blog and left comments. By not divulging my identity to them, I’m not exactly cheating them but it still feels rotten.

Well, that morose post was not to be. A gentle breeze blew, flowers bloomed, birds chirped and all the gods, in true Amar Chitra Katha style, peeped out of the clouds to shower their blessings on me. So what do I have but two blog awards! You can see the ‘diamond’ award for ‘brilliant’ blogging here and the ‘butterfly’ award for ‘friendliness’ here. Whether I am brilliant and friendly is highly debatable but what’s for sure is that I’m dancing for joy. Or doing the armchair equivalent of it. That’s particularly so because I adore the bloggers who gave me these awards – for their clarity of thought as well as their brilliant word craft.

I’m supposed to pass on these awards to other bloggers but I’m really too lazy at the moment to do that. Many of the blogs I frequent are already carrying these badges so it really is too much of hard work to sift through them and give the awards appropriately.

But the essence of all this blog-awarding seems to be to bring more and more blogs to the attention of a wider audience. I have warmed up to that idea. I have often landed at excellent blogs that not many people seem to have noticed (like mine ). I’ve forgotten most of them but from henceforth I shall point them out in my blog, so that my regular readers (about four at last count) will get to appreciate those blogs as well. Here comes the first lot:

Let’s Put Da: He’s already quite popular but he’s so pun-tastic and such a pun-dit that I would like to share the joy with you guys. I particularly love his Twitter posts.

The Secret Journal of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala: About five years ago, when I first heard the name Jhunjhunwala, I thought it was a soan-papdi vendor. It turned to awe when I read about how he ‘bought and sold shares at the right time’ and therefore got to sit on a pile of cash. After I chanced to see this blog (by an anonymous blogger with a brilliant sense of humor) I can’t read any news item about him in the papers without grinning. Excellent satire.

Chokka Thangam: You’ll see him more in the comments section of other bloggers than at his own blog. The few posts that he has put up are eminently readable. He has a rare gift – he can laugh at himself. And we tend to laugh along with him. But I do find his e-mail id quite obnoxious. Maybe there are layers of meaning to it in senthamizh that I’m unaware of, but to my semi-illiterate eyes it kinda stinks