Fear

to blog or not to blog. that has been the question, for a considerable period, i might add. or at least it was till now. after years of staying away from these murky waters, i have fnally decided to take the plunge. now i do realise that this fact, while hugely important to me, probably doesnt mean a damn thing to anyone else on the planet. the reasons i stayed away though, might just be slightly more.

In one word, fear. Of course the public self-analysis isn’t that simple. The fears were so many, and over time became so deep-rooted, that id find any excuse to avoid being judged by a potentially infinite number of people. Which leads me to the next fear; that there would be no judgement at all; that the damn thing would be so bloody boring that id get fewer hits than Gary Neville would get hit-on at a party full of nubile convent schooled young ladies. That’s what I mean by deep-rooted. And it doesn’t even end there. The meadium is such that criticism may be anonymous, but it is also instantaneous. And one you put yourself out there, you ar always open for a bashing.

Having admired and enjoyed many bloggers, questions kept presenting themselves, and sometimes at the most inopportune moments. What are you going to write about? What will you call it? Do you have a style? What if no one gets the jokes? Sometimes this happened while in the middle of writing something else, something work related, leading to complete shutdown. While writing a terse email to the missus leading to a breakdown in already broken-down lines of communication. Or when id done the hard work of plying the new girl at the bar with drinks, attention and the right amount of humour to take care of events post last-order, resulting in a failure of the essential machinery. I could go on.

So I suppose it would be safe to say that as of right now I am the most frightened man in this realm. Or at least I was, till I was inspired. And the credit for my new found bravery, just like the credit for the success of the IPL, goes to none other than Mr Lalit Modi. I wrote just yesterday in the paper that I was surprised by how quickly Twitter has become a source of stories for journalists, and information for many others. What I didn’t realise was the effect it would have on me. If Modi could risk his cricket empire at the alter of the tweeting gods, my empire-less existence means much less is at stake.

So Mr Modi, with your name on my lips, I take the plunge.