My 400th Post: Thank You

This is my 400th blog post. The trouble is to get people, who know me in person, to believe that I have written 400 posts.
"You mean you really know how to string words together to form a coherent sentence?", asks one, as surprised as though I had claimed to walk on water.
"Well! He is over 50. He must have learned something, I suppose", says the other, sounding not particularly convinced that I could have learned anything.
"Still!" says a third, "400 posts?"
"Hahaha! Yes, sounds a bit like that monkey tapping arbitrary keys on a typewriter and churning out the complete works of Shakespeare" is the contribution of a fourth to this flow of reason.
There you have it. There are some people who, when seen, impress as founts of wisdom and stand-ins for Solomon in the modern world. And then there is me, who so inspires people that they look on in slack-jawed amazement if I even demonstrate a capability to tie-up my boot-laces and, thereafter, refuse to accept the evidence of their eyes.
So, it came as no surprise when I first started blogging in 2009 and found each one of my 21 posts receiving precisely one reader - Me. Well , I did not actually realize it then. Since I used to pop into my blog and read my own words with admiration some twenty times a day, I did see stats about some 20 page-views every day and had pleasant dreams of twenty unknown chappies popping in every day to enjoy my pearls of wisdom. Till some spoilsport told me of this 'Don't track your page-views' option. THAT brought down my daily page-views to precisely zero, thereby killing all my interest in pursuing blogging for the nonce.
I had realized, of course, that the only way I would be getting someone to read my blog is if that person hadn't met me before. Then he/she would not be affected by this peculiar charisma, that I seemed to have, of convincing people about my utter incompetence in anything that I set my hand to doing. Which would give a fair chance of making him/her assess the writing for whatever it was worth. The problem was how to lure unwary strangers into my blog.
Then, in 2012, someone told me of blog aggregators - specifically Indiblogger - and off I went to brush the dust off my blog and started writing all over again. If, over these nearly four years, my blog has been selected among the 'Top Five Blogs' by Blogadda in 2014 AND 2015 AND among the Top Humor blogs by Baggout, it is largely thanks to a lot of people, who were previously strangers and are now friends. People, who knew me first from my writing, and most who still know me only from the writing. Even the few who have now met me in person seem to have been immunized to my peculiar personal charisma. My thanks to all the people who have been reading my blog over the years and to those who allowed me to scribble on your blogs. Some of you lost interest after a few months, some are now at the door waving goodbye, and some have stuck with me all the while. Thanks to all of you for making this blog what it is today.
Then I get ambitious. I write a book published by Fablery (Thanks Nethra) - 'A dog eat dog-food world' available in print here in India alone; as an ebook for Indian customers here and for others here. Imagine people, infected by my charms, and absolutely convinced that there is more sense in the scribbling of their five year old child/grandchild, actually buying a book written by me. Your mind boggles? Mine did, too, but whoever said that optimism is sane? What was very heartening, though, is the fact that they loved me and wished me well in making the book a bestseller. 'You may have a skull full of clay instead of brains, but nevertheless we love you' was probably the message. Thank you for caring about me and for being interested in my success, if success there is to be.
Honestly, it is heart-warming to have earned so much goodwill. But, since the post is more about gratitude for people who helped me on a writing journey, I will devote a shade more time on the people who put in efforts into making that wish for me come true. For, after all, for a book to become a bestseller, it must first sell.
My thanks, first, to all those who believed in my writing and actually plonked down the cash to buy the book.
My thanks to Kevan Dinn, Ramesh Grandhi, Saikumar Yerubandi, Chandru, Shashi Kadapa for not only buying the book but also giving reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. To realize the nervousness of a debuting author about how well his book will be received and to prioritize a response was amazing. And all without being egged on by me to do so.
My thanks to Percy and Shubhangi for buying the book, reviewing it on Amazon and Goodreads as well as on their blogs. And for supporting me all through by sharing the book links in their circles, as indeed did Ramesh Grandhi. All three of them have made my aims for the book their own and supported me. As, indeed, has Mahesh.
My personal friends (Yeah! I know! They have MET me and still remain uninfected by my 'He can do nothing worthwhile' charisma) - Venkatesh and Sudhakar - who are imperiling their personal friendship with people by spamming them about my book. (Yes, indeed! They did buy the book, too!)
My thanks to my co-authors on a previous venture - Karthik and Radha - for supporting me all through. To buy multiple copies so that they could gift their friends the book in order to spread the word of the book; to actively spread word of the book both in Social media and email AND to talk to me about what to do with the book, as though it was THEIR success they were planning for as much as it would be mine - I have no words to say all that it meant to me.
My thanks also to all those who will be supporting me in my writing endeavors in future.
AND, yes, Life is not all about writing, though I must confess that, with a new book out, it currently seems like it is all about it. There are a lot of people around me, who are not much for reading, but stand by me through the vicissitudes of life. To all of them, my thanks.