Gosh! That must be about a hundred thousand people watching me now. Where is this? Looks like Camp Nou. This is a fantastic stadium. I have great memories of this stadium. I’ve scored dozens and dozens of goals here. This must be a very important match. Who are we playing by the way? I see that the opponents are wearing yellow. Man, I don’t want to be playing Wigan. Give me something better. Hang on. I see little Messi walking in. That must be Barca then. At Camp Nou stadium and playing in yellow kits. Yes, they are. Am I playing for England or Chelsea? I see Didier around. Ok then, it is Barcelona vs Chelsea at Camp Nou. I think I’m being put in my usual attacking midfield position. What? Me? You know me. Frank Lampard. Still wondering? Googling always better than wondering.

We’re waiting to kick off. It won’t start until that man wants us to. No, that’s not the referee I’m talking about. I’m talking about the gamer that’s controlling us. Who’s playing us today? Ah, that’s vjkrishna. Gentle gamer. Knows his football. And he likes me too. Would always play me and never subs me. I hate to be played by players who don’t know how to use me. Vjkrishna adores me. I think I’m like his idol. He puts me in right areas and makes full use of my capabilities. But you know what, he makes me run and work. He uses me in attack as well as defence. That normally makes me tired by the 75th minute but that’s football.

Why is he not starting the game yet? What’s stopping him? Let me see. Okay, his controllers are out of batteries. He’s gone to check his daughter’s toys to see if he can quickly get a pair of batteries. The funny thing is, we’ll have to be on the pitch, in the positions, waiting for kick off until he resumes the game. That’s the case for all the players including me, Terry, Ballack, Drogba, Messi, Eto and Xavi. We’re all the same. One interesting thing is, we can stand here for ages with no impact to us, it’s only when we play we get fatigue. We’re still waiting for him to back and resume. No idea where he’s gone. The other day we waited for about an hour and suddenly the power went off. Such disappointment.

He’s back. Looks like he’s got the batteries. He is in his couch. Ok boys, we might start any moment. Oh wait, he gets up. For what? Strange. I’ve been played by him more than a thousand times and he’s never done this. If he loads us up, he’s always played the match. What’s wrong today? I see him opening the DVD closet to look for something. Is he going to watch a movie? Probably not. That closet has only games. Goddammit, he’s picking up the tennis game. The bloody new rival. Vjkrishna has always played football, every single time he’s loaded the xbox. I think so. Anyway, if he doesn’t play football on xbox, I don’t exist. I think he’s gonna pull us out of the box and load tennis. God, that must be some insult. He’s still thinking. Ah, he’s leaving the tennis game exactly where it should be – the shelf. Let’s have a kick about.

There he starts the game. I’ll catch you after the first half.

Half time. Great game so far. We’re trailing by a goal but we did dominate the game. Barca are very good but in this match, they are controlled by the AI programme and not by humans. I love to be controlled by humans. They bring the best out in me, especially gamers like vjkrishna. With the way the game’s going, I think we might turn it around in the first half. Vjkrishna has subbed Anelka and he’s bring in on Mikel. Very strange considering that we are a goal behind. Oh, he wants us to play 4-4-2. Because Mikel is in, he’s put me in the left midfield. Not to my liking. Catch you again at full time.

Final whistle. 1-2. We’ve lost. We came back and scored that equaliser early on. But Messi wreaked havoc and finally found the net at the 80th minute. We’ve lost the game. This is such an important game. Playing Barcelona at Camp Nou. We should have won or at least have drawn the match. I might just be the electronic clone of Frank Lampard but I hate to lose these big matches. But there is one big advantage I hold over my flesh-and-blood clone. I get a second chance to get things right, probably, every single time. There you go, vjkrishna is arranging for a re-match. He’s not gonna end the session until we win. We’ve never finished losers. Super Frankie Lampard! I’m sure you envy me on that one!

Ever thought of writing an autobiography? I thought about this only today. I’m sure one does not have to be a celebrity to write one. Who’s going to read that then, you might ask. I’d say, yourself and if you allow, a few more people. I’m almost convinced that all lives are equally very interesting and very random that they all qualify for nice autobiographies. Because it’s not just about what happened in your life but also what went through in your mind while these things were happening around you. But what’s the point in writing an autobiography? You think about your life, you talk about your life, then why not write? If not anything, it could be fun. It’s not a crazy idea. We all have stories to tell, why not write them? As I said, if you start writing the stuff you think and talk, you’d have a book.

Generally, what stays on top of the mind are only the strong memories that really invoke some very strong emotions. There could be so many other things that must have happened. Those things don’t come to the fore unless you make a conscious attempt to think, talk or write about it. We don’t often get to bring back these memories unless we have an opportunity like meeting an old friend, visiting your hometown, visiting your school etc. And what stays in our brain is mostly the recent memories. Recent memories always have a ‘high beta value’. Something good happens, we go overboard, something bad happens we get terribly upset. That’s not the case with old memories. Old memories invariably make us proud. Proud about how we achieved those best moments and proud about how we have come through the worst moments.

If I think of my primary school, I have about half a dozen events most of which is not worth mentioning. In my high school, dozens of stories but again most of them are of less relevance. In my college days, some very interesting events certainly worth recording. My CA days have to be half of the book. Just three years and there were clear directions in various facets – life, family and career. And then comes the office days leading up to the present days. Basically, I can talk about how I was brought up, what kind of kid I was, why some events and stuff that are still vivid and what impact they had on me, what moving around meant to me as a kid, my disappointments as a kid, my backstreet highs, what kind of school I got into, my new friends, my academics, my gully cricket and how sucked at it, my love for chess and how I had that discussion with my father that I’d be a professional chess player, how I cleared the 10th a bit uncharacteristically, how higher secondary sculpted my future career, how I topped the school in 12th and the chicken pox scare just before the exams, oh, I’d keep on going!

If you like writing and if you like to revisit your life, there is no better thing than to write an autobiography. Writing an autobiography is not the same as writing diaries or making a collection of it. A diary might record things as and when they happen. Events and views would be very current. An autobiography is a recollection. It is today’s view on yesterday’s events. I get a chance to evaluate and appreciate what I have done all along. Of course I do that as soon as things happen but more often than not, it would have the bias of the recent memory. Think of a decision that you took 10 years back. The way you evaluate and appreciate that decision now would surely be better than how you’d have done the day after the decision was made or a year after the decision was made. I’d imagine that now you’d have more maturity and better understanding of the problem or the decision than you had back then. It would be so fascinating to see how sometimes things were so right back then look so wrong now and vice versa.

Also, you cannot deny that there is this joy of re-living those memories. Nostalgia is a very common human feeling. Even if you’re having your best times, you can still feel nostalgic. The joy of or longing for re-living these old memories is what makes people to arrange for a re-union, sign up in orkut and facebook, make a trip to the home town, visit those places that you did when they were young and all such stuff. We like to recollect and re-live those moments. When I went for my daughter’s school for her admission, I went back about 15 years. Just like in the movies. Almost remembered the name of the guy who got me kneel down in the sun for couple of hours. Now what I’m pondering is if I can jot down these incidents, events, memories and later on edit, arrange and organise for a meaningful mass of text. And probably, call it part one of my autobiography!

Your autobiography could even be worth sharing. Someone could know more about you. You might end up knowing more about yourself, you never know! Truly, I think, if we set out to write an autobiography, we’d know how much we don’t know about ourselves. You might have to talk a lot about your childhood to your parents, family and friends. You might be searching for that old photograph that you’re never keen to show to others, that handwritten letter which could illegibly soiled, that trophy that you won for God knows what, that gift that you always managed to hide from everyone, that piece of memorabilia that you believe is still there somewhere. To use a cliche, you’ll walk down the memory lane. And trust me, you’ll enjoy that trip.

When I say autobiography, I don’t have a 500-page book in my mind. Just a story of my life so far, whatever number of pages it takes. What will I do with that book? I don’t know what I will do with that but I’d certainly enjoy writing it and that would be, for me, well worth the time. On second thoughts, well, I can gift it to my daughter 15 years later. Not bad, eh?

My internet has finally broken down. It’s been three days and there are no signs of a better tomorrow. I badly need internet but there’s little I can do about it. I hate these helpless situations. Is internet not as essential as air, water, xbox, food and shelter? I want to read all those election manifestos to see whose has the promise of uninterrupted high speed internet. What do I do now? I can’t stop browsing and blogging. Of course I have my sweet little Nokia N95 which allows me to use internet but that’s never enough. With almost a sense of self-pity, I decided to do something about this. What are the things I could do?

Call up the service provider: It may not really help me, still I can try. So I tried. The number kept ringing and after half a minute I got to listen to a strange music. Phone ring sounded sweeter. And the music went on. Nothing else happened. I hung up. I tried again. After a couple of rings someone picked up the phone and banged the phone down. Not my idea of customer service. I kept trying. Finally, I got to listen to the live voice of a human being. He informed me that I’ve dialled the wrong number and directed me to another number. I was puzzled. I had dialled the same number I’ve been dialling for internet problems. Anyway, I consoled myself that number might have changed. I called this new number. Guy at the other end told me that I should be calling a different number which happened to be the number I originally called. I gave up.

Try to fix the problem myself: It’s true that you don’t necessarily need to go the himalayas to get a humbling experience. While I was trying to fix this internet problem yesterday, I realised that I had no clue how to fix it. First of all I didn’t know what the problem was. All I could do was to perform certain actions over and over again and hope that I get connected. So I restarted the laptop. Nothing happened. I restarted the modem. Still nothing happened. I disconnected and reconnected the phone cord. No signs of internet life yet. I even allowed windows to diagnose and repair the problem. But it did neither and left me where I was. I didn’t know what else to do. I was helpless. I was wasting time. I gave up.

Go for a workaround: I remember that I can use my Nokia N95 as a modem and have my laptop connect to the internet via my mobile. I needed to have an application installed in the laptop. Fine, I think it must be there, oh wait, didn’t I uninstall it when had nothing else to do? I did. No problem. I can re-install the application with the CD that came with the phone. Problem. I have no clue where that CD is. I have the laptop, the mobile, the chord that connects them both but what I don’t have is the application or the CD. Why can’t I simply magnify what’s on the mobile screen into a laptop screen with the help of bluetooth or rednose? May be I’m a decade ahead of our times, technologically speaking. Basically, I gave up.

Come up with a creative solution: I’ve heard about those. You run around the solution and away from it so much that you get lost and then suddenly the simplest of all workable ideas looks like a creative solution. Here it is. Open notepad. Type the stuff. Save it and send it to the mobile using bluetooth. Save it as a notes item in mobile. The copy all the text. Open mobile browser and go the blog admin area. Create a new post and paste all the text. Publish. Not bad.

Blogging is all about writing and publishing. Bulk of the time normally goes in writing. Publishing is a minute’s work. For writing, all that I need is a computer. Computers don’t think, so I need to have ideas too. To execute the ideas, I need to time to write. Time is not an issue as I constantly withdraw some time from my wife. So, ideas + computer + time = writing. Blogging = writing + publishing. Publishing what’s been written, as I said, is a minute’s work and that can happen from my mobile. I can do this every single day until my internet is fixed. Cool eh? There is a slight downside as well. Because the internet access is a bit restricted, I may not get to read stuff as well. It’s not that I write well-researched articles but it certainly helps. Also rationed internet means no pictures in blogs. I know you like text better than pictures. A word is worth a 1000 pictures. Let’s concentrate on the text, that thing in black and white, that thing the author screams.

I’m struggling for a good last line so let me just say that the normal service resumes

Aren’t you getting tired of these news channels? It’s all getting a bit obscene now. Everything is a breaking news. Everything is a sensation. I don’t take any of these headlines at newsvalue. Something becomes a headline because there is nothing better to report. Unfortunately, there should always be a sensational headline, a terrible crisis, a shock report etc. What’s more unfortunate is, if there is none, there is an attempt to create these. Make a news out of nothing. I realise it’s not easy to keep giving news for 24 hours non-stop. But you have a choice of creating news or being responsible and educate people otherwise.

When the Bangalore blasts happened, I was in Bangalore. I was staying in Shivajinagar which was one of the several places where the bombs exploded. It is, of course a big news and a terrible news. But I can confirm that it was not as bad as it was made out to be, by the news channels. I was shopping around that weekend because things returned to normalcy in a matter of few hours. If you had followed the images and footages on the television, you must have been thinking that Bangalore was burning, while I was exploring the city on foot and by taxi.

We have too many private news channels. And there is a dog-eat-dog competition among them. What this results in is a cheap competition of who can best sensationalise the happenings. Sadly, that’s what it all boils down to. You can see that if you keep switching across channels while something worthwhile is being reported. I guess there must be a mad rush to fix a catchy deadline that can run for days and weeks. It is purely a business. It is just a matter of who sells more copies or who gets more viewership.

The crudeness, the cheapness of reporting is one. Worst is, the joy, more than the duty, of reporting terrible incidents. Sometimes it makes me feel that if they hear about a serial bomb blast somewhere, they might scream ‘yesssssssss’. The news channels’ job is a bit like that of the doctors. If everyone’s healthy, he’s got nothing to do. That shouldn’t mean he’s hoping for the cholera to break out. If it does break out, he can’t be spreading the scare and fear instead of awareness and alertness.

Journos question everyone. News channels are omnipotent. They are so bloody powerful. They question politicians, economists, sportsmen, artists, celebrities; they can question anyone. They have the God-given right to ask anyone the tough questions. They have the privilege of embarrassing anyone in the public eyes. They might even score some brownie points when they get someone to walk out on them from the studio or when someone was made to weep. I guess they would also weep if it helps the TRP.

Who can question the news channels? Who can evaluate them? They can name and shame the politicians for not doing their job, they can question the commitment of a player when he is not in form, they can brutally criticise an artist and his creations and pretend that they know more than the learned economists. Now, who’s checking if the news channels are doing their job? Who’s going to report them? How do you evaluate the news channels is an interesting topic in itself.

You must know about this blogger Chyetanya Kunte who wrote a post titled ’shoddy journalism’ about the coverage of the Taj incident by NDTV. He was not a well known blogger or anything. He wrote about how the terrorists used the NDTV’s live coverage of the whole Taj incident. He was particlarly singling out Barkha Dutt for the ’shoddy journalism’ and questioning her ethics. He was tracked down by the NDTV and Barkha Dutt. He was sued and made to issue an apology in his own blog for his post. Below is his original post for which NDTV sued Kunte. Make up your mind.

I think it was a very good post (though with a poor closing line) which should have been responded by Barkha appropriately instead of a libel. He has raised some very vital questions which require answers more than anything. Those were the questions on everyone’s lips. When this argument continued in facebook, Barkha herself responded there in facebook, again with no valid response. You can read the whole history of this battle here. The whole episode was seen as a breach of freedom of expression. The bloggers were enraged. Many many anti-Barkha communities were created in Facebook. Finally, we all realised there is a way to talk about the Press. I think the answer to who can evaluate and if required, criticise the news channels lies in this very incident.

It is in the internet, and it should be the bloggers. Who else can do that and using which other medium?

It’s maintenance day today. That doesn’t mean there is no post today. You can’t even doubt that because you’re reading it. I was working on introducing the ’subscription by email’ thingy which took me some time. (I’ve removed it temporarily because IE did not like it, will fix it tomorrow). Now what you can do is to add your email in the invisible text box on the sidebar. No amount of crying ‘I’m only human’ would help, you need confirm that you’re indeed a human by verifying your email address. That’s it, everyday, the posts will arrive in your inbox. Personally, I’m not a big fan of email subscriptions. The one thing they completely curb is the beauty of interactions and discussions.

Now what’s going to happen is people sign up with their email address so that they don’t have to type www.vjkrishna.com and check for the posts. This would mean that the comments and interaction in the blog would reduce. I’m not pleased with that. Blogs should be market of views and opinions, not just of the blog author, also that of every reader. But then, why am I spending time in setting this up? Because, it would help you. It sure helps the readership of the blog articles. It is a trade off between 10 readers of which 4 could comment regularly and 100 readers of which 10 could comment regularly.

My advice to you is to subscribe by email if that’s the best you can do. Whether you read the blog from your mailbox or from the web, do leave your comment. That’s certainly easier than writing a blog, isn’t it? When I read something, I might feel ‘hey, that’s good’ or ‘wow, that’s cool’ or ‘oh! this sucks’ or ‘the guy’s clueless’ or whatever. All that I need to do is to just type these feelings in the comment box. As simple as that. If you can substantiate your feelings, that sets up nicely for another round of discussion.

I want to tell about few other things that might not have caught your eye. Look at the top menu bar. You know all about HOME. Then you got ABOUT. That’s where I boast about myself and make you feel inferior. That’s my bit. And then, you see a link for ARCHIVES. On clicking that you’ll see the list of all posts ever posted on this blog. It is also nicely arranged by every month. It shows you the post title and the number of comments in each post. In the menu bar, next to archives, you see COMMENTS. Going into that, you’ll see the excerpts of the last 20 comments posted in this blog. You can click and go to the comment to read it fully.

After comments, you have CONTACT. That’s where you see the contact form. That’s the one you need to use when you want to give me an award or something like that. Type in the details there, your message gets delivered to my email box directly. After that, you see the GRAVATARS. I feel sorry for the ones that don’t use gravatars. It’s simple, free and it’s fun. I don’t think you need more reasons to use gravatars. Yes, you may not know how to set it up but that’s why you have this link in the menu.

To all new bloggers, now that’s your lesson on how to write an article when you have nothing to write

Pardon my ignorance. Yesterday was the first time I heard about ‘Flash Fiction’. This is also known as sudden fiction, micro fiction, post card fiction etc. Normally flash fiction are short stories told under a 1000 words. There are variations. Some expect flash fictions to be under 750 words. There is also a version that says flash fiction should be less than 100 words.

Ernst Hemingway wrote this famous shortest story: “For sale: baby shoes. never worn.” This is about a poor parent who is yet to recover from the disaster of their miscarriage. Imagine the emotional impact created by just 6 words. Reminds me of how much we waste words. Flash fiction is about using less descriptions and adjectives and fillers but still coming up with the same impact.

Here is my attempt at a micro-fiction.

I’m on my bike, waiting for the traffic signal. I should take a right. If I take a left I’ll save 20 minutes but I saw the ‘no entry’ sign on the road. Should I take the long right or the short left? The signal’s goes green. The biker ahead of me takes the left defying the ‘no entry’ signal. That’s my motivation. I take the left folliwing him. From nowhere comes the traffic police and stops me. He tells me “you’re not supposed to enter this road, didn’t you see the sign?”. I say, “sorry sir, the guy before me just took this road”. He says “but he didn’t get caught”.

I guess all zen stories would classify as micro fictions. Little fish in the ocean asking its mom: ‘where is this thing called ocean?’. Zen stories always say it with fewer words but carry a lot of depth. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s possible to create that impact with more words. More words might only kill it.

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, “Oh, no! The candle is out.” The second monk said, “Aren’t we not suppose to talk?” The third monk said, “Why must you two break the silence?” The fourth monk laughed and said, “Ha! I’m the only one who didn’t speak.”

I never had the patience for reading fictions. I can’t say the same about Flash fictions. It would take me hardly two minutes to read a short flash fiction. I think it is an interesting challenge to try telling a story in less than 100 words. Make an attempt. Will be interesting.

“Anyone can cook” says master chef Gusteau in the movie Ratatouille. What he means is anyone can become a cook. A good cook can come from anywhere. All that you need is passion to cook. Writing is no different. In fact, writing is not so difficult and demanding as cooking. I’ve never tried cooking. As a law-abiding person, I don’t think I’d ever do. But I write. With the growth of internet, everyone is a writer. See, I’m a writer. If you own a blog and start writing about random stuff you are a writer too.

I hear people saying “I don’t have time”. I’d say you don’t need time. All it takes for a decent post is 20 mins. That’s because, you don’t think as you write. Think of a writable topic and keep thinking about what you can write and start organising your thoughts mentally. All this you can do when you’re driving or walking. How long you want to mentally construct the post is up to you. After you’re done with you thought process, when you sit down to write/type, it’s not going to take you more than 20 minutes.

And then, one can say “I’m technologically challenged”. See, I know nothing about my car. I can drive it. I simply don’t understand how it works and I don’t think I need to know that. I never understood how electricity works but that never stopped me consuming power that makes people wonder if it’s a factory over here. Just simply use it. Setting up a blog takes a few minutes. And then it’s just you and your blog. You write and publish. And you keep doing it. There is no need for any special knowledge.

“I don’t think I’m a good writer”. I’m confident that I’m a good writer (you might have a different opinion). I wasn’t able to say this a year back. I own another blog too where I have written about 700 posts. Like other things, writing improves with practice. It’s not like I write something and about 100 million people read and say ‘you’re such a loser’. The fact is, when you start writing you’ll have a very small audience and readership grows with time. It’s ok, if we write poorly. Everybody can talk but does everyone talk well? It’s an art, isn’t it? It can improve with time.

Write about what? All that you need as a writer is some ideas/concepts/topics to write about. To be honest, in a blog like this, I can write about anything. Let me take my eyes off my laptop. What do I see? I see my television. I can write about television, its impact, the programmes I love etc. I turn my head I look at my sofa. I can write about furniture. How we never had any furniture at home once and accumulated all this now. I turn to my right, I see my balcony. If a balcony cannot inspire you to write, what will? It’s not at all difficult to write especially if you don’t restrict yourself to a shell.

What if I write? Writing is fun. It truly is. You need to experience it to feel it. You’re the creator. It makes you more confident, it can make you think better, it can get you good friends, it can get you money or even a career, if you so wish.