Thank you, Reader

Tomorrow my blog will clock half a million views. For me, it’s a significant achievement. It would not have been possible to make that achievement without you, dear reader. A big thank you from the depths of my heart.

 

The Readership

Franz Kafka was a rare genius who did not wish his writings to be read by anyone. He let his friend Max Brod read them, though. Towards the end of his brief life (he died at the age of 40), he ordered Brod to destroy his works. Brod chose to disobey the last wish of his friend and so we have some of the finest novels like The Trial and The Castle. I have read both of them two times and may read them again.

Kafka was a genius. I am a mediocre individual by any standards. Unlike Kafka, I love to be read. There was a time when appreciation meant almost everything to me. Now I have transcended that phase and it doesn’t matter even if no one appreciates me. Yet I would be sad if no one cared to read what I write. That’s why the numbers matter.

I made a lot of friends and a few enemies through my blog. I met many like-minded people through blogging. I met people who questioned my views in very civil and even friendly ways unlike the commentators I come across on Facebook. There were also people who told me not to write certain things. My last employers in Delhi – Radha Soami Stasang Beas – told me explicitly that some of my blog posts were too critical of them. When I told them that I never wrote about them, they laughed. I still remember that laughter of the two ladies, one a wizened old lady with silver hair on her head and a plastic smile on her dead thin lips and the other her symmetrical antithesis. “Readers know what your stories mean,” the old lady told me. I said stories could be interpreted in various ways. Those were days when I transmuted my frustration into fiction. Those familiar with the school where I worked would understand what the stories meant precisely. But the stories had universal appeal too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have so many readers from America, England, France and Germany. The ladies accepted my explanation. I think they were only testing me and were not really serious about their demand. I continued to write stories about what happened in the school and they never interfered.

 

Where do readers come from?

Eventually the school was shut down by them and in the meanwhile Modi had ensconced himself on the Indraprastha throne. Modi became a favourite topic of my blog posts because he is the most fascinating character living in today’s India. I made a lot of enemies because of my political writing. I had to unfriend quite many people from Facebook and many unfriended me. Some concerned friends even called me up and counselled me to avoid political posts. They thought I was putting my life in danger. But I told them that I now lived in Kerala where the BJP had no roots.

The BJP has succeeded in raising its Medusa head in Kerala now and the state is slowly becoming like Adityanath’s UP. The transformation of my home state stunned me so much that I could not write about it. So my writing shifted from politics though not completely.

I have had over 200 readers every day irrespective of the themes I choose. They sustain me. This is to say ‘Thank You’ to each one of them, to you, dear reader. I love your presence here, in this virtual space, with a safe distance between us.