My Stats page looks like a Railway Station

And not one of the busy ones either

My stats page looks like a far off railway station from some remote corner of India. It’s like one train visits it every day, halts for about a minute, realizes there’s no point waiting here, the station does not offer what the train is looking for, and moves on to the next station. And the next one arrives the next day. There are times when a train just slows down, speeds up immediately and carries on. My “views” increments by 1, but the “reads” remain the same. There are days when there are no trains. Zero. Shunya.

All my rustic, small-town, grassy but clean platforms lie empty. Waiting for trains to come, the fresh refreshments are ready, hot Masala Chai and Samosas. The book stalls are ready with the best collection of books, from the latest of Chetan Bhagat, to the oldest of Shakespeare. There’s a beautiful Gulmohar tree right in the middle of the platform, under which you can enjoy your chai and Samosas with your favorite book. And there are all sorts of other arrangements too: the water tanks are full with fresh water to refill the coaches, and clean them. There’s all the equipment for minor repairs to the engine and get it in perfect condition.

There’s just one problem, it’s all self-service. We have no attendants to work on the train, no coolies to do the heavy lifting. The train has to serve its own people and do its own repairs. Refill its coaches by itself. That’s a lot of hard work. And to add to that, the passengers cannot take anything with them. The beverage and snacks should be consumed here while on the platform. The book should be read right there, they cannot take it with them. The only thing they can take is the memories of the experiences. They can take with them the lingering taste of the chai, not the actual chai. They can take with them the feeling of the wind in their hair under the Gulmohar, not the actual tree. They can take with them the ideas and concepts of brilliant writer that they read on the platforms. They cannot take the books with them. And more often than not, the train will be forced to repair their engines. Even if they feel their engine is perfect they will be forced to take a look again, and maybe change directions completely sometimes. But even that is self-service. Nothing is ready made, they have to do the hard work themselves. Maybe that’s why hardly any trains stop here really.

Does the station need a revamp ? Should I change it like one of the swanky ones with all the extra features and luxuries. The really large ones with ever increasing number of platforms and features from big big cities. The well polished automated attendants that will do all the work for you. The train just needs to go there and stand, and it will be enriched, or so it will feel at least. The shiny lights on these stations entice the trains into coming there from away. And with the crowd of other trains that’s already queuing up there, and “recommendations” from so many other trains that have previously visited there, every train is forced to at least take a look. Life seems so easy for the trains when they are on these platforms. Their routes are mapped out for them, their travels plans prepared. Their refueling routines charted our for the rest of their journey. And the trains are naive enough to believe that the same plans and charts and maps will work for every train that comes there. That the terrain ahead is actually that predictable and simple. They just need to acquire the right equipment and they are ready. And these stations are just waiting to give them the right equipment.

And it’s easy for the stations as well, they just need to keep the same equipment ready. Every time a train comes it feels they can just feed the same stuff to every train. They can use the same ideas for building new platforms, just recycle them and market these new platforms as “better” equipment. And the trains come back again, and again. No wonder these stations are super-busy.

I could do it, really, I could, or maybe I just couldn’t. I just don’t have the right equipment for everyone. The correct routes for all the trains, trains faring from north to south, east to west, north-east to north-west, so on and so forth. And I cannot give the same maps to everyone, how can they all have the same route. I can just force them to plan out their own routes as they go along. To discover un-mapped tracks that have not been discovered by anyone before. Heck! even build there own tracks as they go along. I can ask them to take a re look at their engine, modify the engines a bit maybe, and tell them its okay to feel conflicted about their engine, a different engine is not an inferior engine. It just means that it will fare a different path. That is all I can do, and that is all I will do. For that, my stats page will forever look like an empty railway station.