Good afternoon and so long

I'm not exactly known for sentimental farewells, so let me keep this crisp and short. This shall be my last column for MiD DAY. I shall be leaving soon and I plan to write a new book in the near future. I have not yet decided what to write about it is my belief that ideas find authors and that this does not work the other way around but I feel I must write, and so I have decided to take a break.

Quite some time has elapsed since my first book Sherlock Holmes: Solutions from the Sussex Downs was published in the US in 2001, and I pray that I have gained from the experience and the intervening years the maturity to write a new book. Often, I have thought about writing another book, but a lack of time has always prevented this. It is so hard to write a book when one is in the midst of editorial deadlines. But when Destiny avers that you should write a book, you end up writing a book. Period.

Talking about Destiny, she somehow wants me to write a new column after a gap of a couple of years. I started writing columns in 1995 and my first series was Anti-Column, which ran until 1997. This was followed by Obtuse Angle (2000 to 2001) and Take IT Cool (2004 to 2005). After that, I have been writing these pieces in MiD DAY from 2008 till now.

If you look at the time frames, after a two-year gap, I somehow get another column. Going by this, who knows, I may have to write another column in 2012. While my earlier columns dealt almost exclusively with information technology, the series I wrote for MiD DAY were on non-IT topics. I was at first hesitant because my knowledge regarding matters beyond IT is not exactly worth writing home about, but I decided to give it a try.

It has not been an easy task, especially when one considers that I find very little to interest me outside of Sherlock Holmes, Jyotish and IT. Many are the days when I have sat in front of a blank screen with a mind to match wondering what to write.

When I first wrote Anti-Column, I was a mere lad who had not yet seen 23 summers. When I asked my then editor for advice, he wrote out several points that I should consider. I don't remember all the things he wrote, but the last line is still fresh in my memory after all has been said and done, more must be done than said. I pray that this should always be true of anything I do.