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A walk down memory lane - celebrating the 150th blog post

I began blogging in January 2010. I do not recall how exactly I started, but I remember that my parents were the reason. They prompted me to start blogging after I showed an interest in writing and web design (although admittedly, blogging involves minimal amounts of design skills). Over the last 10 years, I have been writing on and off, with my longest break lasting over a year. I have been quite regular over the last 3-4 years, and have been writing with an increased frequency in the last month because of the ongoing Coronavirus lockdown.

This post is special because it is the 150th post to be published on my blog, so I decided to explain how and why I started, and what the course of the blog has been.

For the first 6-7 years, I called myself 'Little Mairpady', because I despised the fact that my parents had omitted the ever-so-cool name 'Mairpady' from my surname (my Dad's full name is Rakesh Rao Mairpady Chandrashekhar). It was my way of expressing my identity - Sanjith Rao MAIRPADY. However, that phase did not last too long, and I am now content with the name that was given to me at birth.

In 2016 or 2017, I decided to rename my blog to 'Reviews with Rao', as the 'Mairpady' phase had long disappeared, and I was no longer 'Little'. In 2018, I decided to purchase my blog's domain name and the URL to my website changed from https://littlemairpady.blogspot.com to just https://sanjithrao.com.
Frequent visitors to my blog are aware of its contents - I am politically active but do not limit myself to it. I write a fair bit about my life, investments, technology, and various other things I find interesting. I do not know how many of my readers today were also keeping up with my blog back in 2010 and in the subsequent years, so I decided to pick some of my favourite articles from the last 10 years and provide links to them for you to enjoy and celebrate the 150th!


1. Microlight - November 2011

A day I remember and speak about to this day. The first time I sat in a two-seater plane and got an aerial-view of Bangalore, listen in on ATC conversations and also co-pilot a plane!

2. IMS (Inventory Management System) - July 2012

An article on a program my Dad wrote for me to maintain an inventory of the books we had by giving each book a code that would let us know about the quality of the book, whether it was with us or lent (to a friend) etc.

3. My Favourite Restaurant - Habanero - Review - August, 2013

It used to be my favourite restaurant until they sadly closed a few years ago. My love for food has always existed!

4. Build a Toilet Project - February 2015

A project for which I raised funds via door-to-door campaigns to address the hygiene issue created by the lack of toilets in slum-dwellings, mainly in the outskirts of Bangalore.

5. Why shows like Shark Tank are extremely misleading - December 2017

An article about Shark Tank, a popular show in which entrepreneurs make a funding-pitch to investors, and how it misleads a majority of their viewers - the young, innocent and naive!

6. Unsettling Signs of Fascism - India - October 2018

An article that initially drew a lot of flak, even from people I knew personally, but something that many people agree with today, not even 2 years on.

7. The Death Penalty in the 21st Century - March 2020

An article that attracted double the page views, and thrice the engagement I usually get after publishing is my personal favourite of 2020. It was published immediately after the hanging of the Nirbhaya convicts in which I provided an argument for and against the death penalty but concluded by saying that it should not exist.

BONUS: One (out of 3) of the times I got covered in the press - an article about me in  the Times of India.
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  1. Rakesh Rao25 April 2020 at 08:49

    Very nicely written summary capturing the key moments (and the posts) in your blog.

    ReplyDelete

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