Blog Readers- Thank You

 736,060 is the number of views of this blog till date, since I began blogging, around 12 years ago. 

Very flattering numbers, even if you discount some tricks played by bots which plant some comments on behalf of strange clients in the comments.

I don't have a specific topic or theme that I blog about. It's sometimes a journal or diary, sometimes an opinion piece, or creative humour, satire etc. Also included are occasional book reviews and film reviews.

Over the years, I have managed about 150 posts a year on an average, with a viewership of about 50-100 on most days. 

Thank you, readers who are regular or irregular, and commenters (genuine human ones). You are a great motivation to continue.

Milestone 600000

That's 600,000 views for my blog, that started around 2009, and has spent a decade in the virtual world. 1968 posts in all so far. Thank you, readers.

From the July 27 Google Stats-

Pageviews yesterday

99

Pageviews last month

3,549

Pageviews all time history

600,594

Pageviews today

148

Blog Readership Crosses 485000

Some amazing stats for the readership of this blog. (on Feb 9, 2018)   Pageviews today                 415

Pageviews yesterday

878

Pageviews last month

8,772

Pageviews (all time history)

485,084         What's the correlation? It generally has to do with the readership from students past. If something catches their attention, the  readership soars. Of course, there are other readers I have, like current students, former colleagues, friends and relatives. But I suspect the past students outnumber them by a large margin. Anyway, whoever you are, thanks for the motivation. I promise you more of what you have been reading :)

Blog Crosses 450000 Views

What keeps you going may be different, but I think blogs/books/conversations keep me going. This blog has been going on for a few years now, and if the readership figures are correct, it seems to get an average of 100 hits a day.

I have also come across a few great blogs along the way, and I want to name a few of them.

Parul Kashyap Thakur's is one of them (she's a former student of IMT Nagpur). Another is a of a cartoonist, Satish Acharya, and one more is that of Vinod Ekbote, who goes book-shopping at Abids in Hyderabad every Sunday. Sowmyashree Gonibeedu also writes poetry on hers.

Harimohan is the one who introduced me to blogging, and he has a very good one. I think every one has a blog inside him/her, but only some choose to write it down. Here's to more people doing it!

4,00,000 and Going

Some stats from my blog to be proud of-

Pageviews last month

10,411

Pageviews Alltime 400, 035

Readers of course, are the key. I did not expect so many of you, really. I am truly madhosh. To celebrate, I am reproducing below an early blog post from 2008 titled Novelty.

What we need to keep us going is something new. According to guys like Osho, everything is evolving all the time, and therefore when you see it tomorrow it is different from what it was yesterday. This applies to everything- from a leaf on a tree to your wife, or for that matter, yourself (the mirror will vouch for that!). But everyone is not Osho. So we make valiant attempts to find variety in our lives. At least I do, sometimes with good results, sometimes with terrible ones. For example, I have tried almost all snacks available at airport counters, and they are equally bad! Ditto for food served inside the aircraft. Maybe when it is airborne, an idli has its way of getting "airy", and therefore tastes like tissue paper soaked in something. I have also tried flying all the domestic airlines now, and they all come across as callous. Just one example. If you know that the plane takes 2 hours, why put it as an hour and a half on the schedule? It fools novices into thinking they may get somewhere on time, but others by now know that they will get to know the sky at 30,000 feet a lot better while circling over the packed airports. So much for novelty. Now what is it that I need to try next? Maybe, Lalu's Garib Rath.

Some Interesting Stats

These are some interesting stats about this blog.

Followers are 100 in number.

Pageviews today

49

Pageviews yesterday

1,422

Pageviews last month

36,446

Pageviews all time history

200,612

Some kind of a landmark, I suppose. Somewhat unexpected, but gratifying. Thank you to whoever is making this happen. Might just subject you to some more of the same, though, be warned. :)

40,000 and Going

Did not think it (this blog)

would sustain this long and be actually read by people. Even now, some of it is the virtual type, I know. But still, happy to have crossed the 40,000 viewers mark. For the blog, I mean. Thanks to you, the readers, might make it to the golden mark. Movies no longer do.

The ones I remember that did (movies, I mean, that ran 50 weeks) were Aradhana, Jeevan Mrityu (Dharmendra, Raakhee), Sholay, and DDLJ (if you don't know what that is, well, you missed one of Kajol and SRK's evergreen romances.

The pics are from Wats (temples) in Thailand. Reclining Buddha and a solid gold one in the other. Don't know why the reclusive, Nirvana-seeker had to be made from Gold. But anyway..

With Love to Russia

There was a James Bond movie titled From Russia with Love. I took the title and twisted it a little, but primarily, this is to express my surprise (pleasant one, of course) at the readership from Russia (for this blog) crossing the readership in India and that from the U.S. for the current week.

Not very clear about why this happened, but I am quite happy about the fact that it has happened in unexpected quarters. I only knew Raj Kapoor's films were popular in Russia some time ago.

Visiting Hyderabad on some work, met two alumni of early batches of KIAMS for a long chat. One of them had helped write a case about her company called Golftripz, which pioneered Golf tours for Indians wanting to play abroad. Hoping to eat some authentic Hyderabadi biryani as I am in close proximity to one of its major purveyors, Paradise restaurant.