This year IPL had come out with chat feature as one of the USP. I wanted to experiment for the first time in my life chatting on live cricket, that too an international match. In first match when I started passing on comments to the moderator, I was warned that I will be thrown out of the chat room by the moderator. It was a total let down, only moderated comments would appear on the screen as per the discretion of the moderator. So I just resigned to the fact that I may not be able to share my experience and enjoy the game along with chat.
The next day I decided to don a female id let us say it was Neha, what difference does it make to the readers whether it is Pavitra, Nita or whatever. I found the moderators attitude totally changed towards my comments. The amount of respect what I got for my comments was heart warming. Now I was forced to put on a façade of female for no fault of mine. Most of my comments started featuring on the chat panel, that too uncensored. Most of my comments had to sound as if a female id was chatting, which was the most difficult part of the act. But I had to keep up to the charade.
As days passed by the moderator started getting friendly, he wanted me to get on the gtalk so that he can talk privately, I had to refuse. Than he asked me my mail id, and I created a fake id in Rediffmail and passed on to him. He sent me a test mail and I shared with him some DP s which I had posted. Than one day he wanted to get close, than I had to reveal that I am married. So be it. Still married female is better in any relationship safer, he assumed. Than the next is the destination, where I am based, well I told him blore, but my pc id protocol is still showing Mumbai I suppose. Lol.
One of the feature of the chat was to chat with celebrities in cricket, during the strategic break etc. We had a number of celebrities starting with Alister Campbell, Mandira Bedi, Lalith Modi, Anil Mathur, Asish Ray, Darly Harper, Simon Doul & Pommie Mbangwa, some how I felt it was fabricated and was looking for a clue.
How can you prove such a thing in the virtual world, where id s can be faked, experience can be doctored, interviews can be fabricated, ………? Suddenly there were additional moderators added on in the form of two females adding excitement among the chatters on the panel. To add masala, another character was a constant companion…..presumably chatting from Singapore, oh what a drama ? Just to make IPL chat a hit ?
Friends can you guess how I got into a trap in webworld and still managed to retain my identity ? How I miss the scripted dialogues ? Ultimately how I found out chatting has its pit falls ? We should not get carried away by make believes. I will reveal the same in my next DP. Till than keep guessing how I literally dug out the façade of celebrity interview ?
Disclaimer: The names of the moderator, his other ids, my id are kept under wraps for obvious reason.
Cont....part 2 from the Dug out
