Though getting featured on a news paper isn’t a big deal for me, it is for my mom. She literally called up everyone who were rude about her & me when I screwed up my 2nd year PU. So many people, relatives scolded me with every other word available in dictionary! People said like “Send him to my hotel, I will hire him as a cleaner”, “Let him work in my estate, will pay 1k/month, should be helpful to you”, “Why don’t he hang himself?” & lot lot more. Moms said to their kids “don’t mingle with Prashanth, he’s a bad guy!”. I was all alone, eyes filled with tears, looking out of window. I was abandoned to all functions, even if go it was ending in an embarrassing situation.

Because of all these comments & bad economic status, my father decided to put me on some job. He took me to some factory nearby to get me a job of loading/un-loading goods! Thankfully the manager of that factory didn’t accept me & suggested my father to give me one more chance. Mom still had some trust on me & forced dad to give me one more chance. Dad finally accepted with one condition that I shouldn’t ask for a single rupee from him!

I decided to go for Diploma in Electronics.

Sponsors of life!!

I looked for all diploma colleges in Bangalore, I couldn’t make it to Govt. college since my SSLC aggregate wasn’t that great. Finally chose a private college with very less fees & requested them to accept fees in installments! I visited many Swamijis, ashramas, needing economical support for my studies. Ones who contributed most of my college fees were Vireshananda Swamiji of Ramakrisna Ashrama, Tumkur & a far relative named Vijay. Remaining I collected from relatives & others. Somehow I raised funds for my studies & finished Diploma with first class.

Change in tone!

Though I am into blogging from a very long time, never cared to tell about it to my relatives. They got to know about it only after article on VK. Now they say to my mom “Your son is brilliant”, moms of my cousins ask me “teach something to my boy also na!”. They might have forgotten what they said before, but how can I? I just smile at them & say “Sure, why not?”.

Bangalore’s first Bloggers Meet happened around 2 years ago, probably in July 2007. I had just started to think about blogging, just had the domain techbangalore.com & having huge traffic of around 150-200 hits per day I felt having a domain is great deal & thought “I am the only one!” (Russel Peter style). I was not even aware of other blogs & bloggers at all! So, Bangalore Bloggers meet was very curious for me. With that curiosity in mind, got prepared for the meet & went to venue BrewHaHa, Koramangala.

I wasn’t as social as now, was just answering people who were talking to me. Few of them (Jerry, Adheeth) thought I am a Mallu going by my curly hair! And Sanjuktha was repeatedly asking “Are you really from Bangalore!! I was just watching all the people, what they talk, what they do, quietly sitting on a bean bag. There was long intro session & I was bit nervous when my turn came!! One of the interesting intros was from TheCruisemaniac (Ashwin Murali)! He was talking about some Para Gliding camp & stuff like that & people were WOWing at him! After the intro session, people started asking more about it & he was surronded by fairly good crowd. I was like “Who the hell is this guy!!? Looks like a BIG SHOT!!”.

I finally made my mind to say hi to The Cruiser! He wasn’t that interested to talk to me & handed over his buiss card. I thought it’s from his employer, but it had his Blog url, email ID & phone number. I was hugely surprised to see that black, simple buiss card (well Blog card!). Went back home & checked out his blog thecruisemaniac.com which was printed on his buiss card. It was pretty good & nice. My feeling about Cruise remained in mind!

Now we are big time friends (LOL) & I recall this moment whenever he ask me “Maga, suggest me some posts for my blog”!