About

“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion.” ― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.” ― Marcus Aurelius

We all have distinct thinking on various matters, and thus our own opinion of things. It is not our opinion that distinguishes me from others, but rather the mutual respect of our own opinions and the actions we take to meet our convictions.

I am Abhinav Krishna Kaiser, and I am the Indian Critic. This is my tiny hatchment to bring the thinking back into our games. I am an Indian, living in the United Kingdom temporarily – a temporary karma bhoomi. I am a nomad of sorts, and travel quite extensively for work.

I am not a narcissist but this is a page where I introduce myself and without being honest, I don’t believe you can have a connection with me. Trust in communication channel that is primarily one-sided works on the premise that the reader trusts the author and believes that the author is being honest in his/her approach. I would like to believe that my efforts through this blog is to put forth my views, thoughts, opinions and tid-bits on things that matter. So what are the things that might interest me, you might ask. Well, in India most of us are glued to politics and cricket. So am I. I am from Bangalore and the age of information did not leave me with much of choice but to get into engineering and then into an IT job. I work as an IT managing consultant at a reputable firm. I am married and have two kids. I will introduce them at a later point in time.

Being a consultant, I have always strived to becoming effective and most things I do work on that premise. On this blog, I will cover a lot of topics on productivity based on my experience and my intent, is not to gloat, but to help others not to reinvent the wheel but to use with a well oiled machine.

Both my parents are writers and as they say some of these characteristics dwell in the blood (not as opposed to DNA :)). I started writing poems before I reached ten but did not progress too far. I remember writing a fantasy story where a kid who wears jet packs zooms into various adventures when I was making it to high school. I just remember bits and pieces of it and the manuscript is long gone. I was the writer and the only reader. After a sabbatical, I began to write on my blog in 2003 on technology. At that time, there weren’t too many writers and that too, not many technology bloggers and the ones who did knew each other by name. Well, I didn’t get too far with my tech blogging and ended up pursuing a career in IT processes. I got a much needed break into the world of writing in 2013 when a publisher approached me to write a book on communication in IT context. I lapped up the opportunity and the outcome was Communication Skills for IT Professionals.

A few months after my book was published, another publisher approached me to write a book on ITIL, a framework that I had gained some fame during the past decade. I took about a year to write my next book – Become ITIL Foundation Certified in 7 Days. At around this time, I made a career change into Agile and DevOps. And my third book opportunity came knocking. Reinventing ITIL in the Age of DevOps is a book where I have tried to make ITIL a player in the digital age when most experts believed that the framework’s end was nearing.

For sometime now, I had always aspired to write fiction and although writing business books brought me satisfaction, it did not challenge my creative juices. I have started working on a number of ideas, starting from mythological fiction, thrillers and police detective oriented ones. Although I am quite certain what it is I want to write, the complete story is yet to take shape.

I spoke briefly of politics earlier. I am born in a family where politics is discussed over breakfast, lunch and dinner. I started reading newspapers when I was 8 (with Deccan Herald) and as I grew older, read a number of magazines like India Today, The Week and Outlook. With the premiering of Star News with Prannoy Roy, I did watch it more than the other channels – not that we had a lot of options back then. Even today, no matter which country I am in , a day does not go by without me indulging my mind into the Indian polity. Most of my opinions that I have shared is over the dining table, either with family or with friends. Now I intend to make Indian Critic the upgraded dining table for such discussions.

Lastly, like most Indians, I follow cricket. I did a whole lot more during Rahul Dravid’s days than now owing to various reasons. I am a fan of two of cricket teams, incidentally both the teams are led by the same man, Virat Kohli, Indian national team and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Although one of the teams has not given me too much to cheer, my heart is in the city it represents and a new age thinking of results don’t matter has become more and more powerful watching the RCB lose matches in a heap.

I make two requests that will help me stay true to the intention and honest. 1. Talk to me through comments and contact channels that I have built on the website. It is only through conversation that the monologue of a blog becomes a dialogue, and it will help us understand each other. 2. Subscribe to my monthly newsletter which shall include special features that are not generally shared on the blog. You will find the subscription form on the sidebar to the right of the content.

Apart from Indian Critic, I write on ITIL, Service Management, Agile, DevOps and other management topics on another blog that I started ten years back called Abhinav PMP.