We played at the World Trade Centre in New York City, on the top observation deck. It was very glamorous.

I held pretty well for the first ten games. We were even after ten games. But after the tenth game, I collapsed. I lost four out of five games in a week. Out there, the tension was so high that I fell apart. Till then I had played a maximum of eight games only (at a stretch) and not more than that.

Once we crossed ten games, my inexperience surfaced. On the contrary, after the 10th game, he increased his effort. There were some tactical mistakes from my side. I lost the match.

Kasparov is a different kind of person than Karpov. He is not exactly an unfriendly person, but during the match, he would try to intimidate me. You have to accept that. Now when I look back, I feel what he did was probably not unethical. He used to get up and slam the door. Today, I would say it was my job to ignore it or do something similar to him. You cannot go crying 'Mummy, mummy!' to the arbiter every time he slams the door.

The simplest antidote is to ignore such people, but I had no experience then.

It is another matter that I feel comfortable playing games and not doing such things. If at all I intimidate people it is on the board and not otherwise. But it is very difficult to define what is wrong and what is right in these areas.

I became World number 2 in the PCA ranking list after the match.

Getting engaged

I also got engaged in 1996. I remember calling Aruna from a phone booth in Wijk Aan Zee and after a couple of minutes I said bye and hung up. She thought it was because she offended me, but what happened was that it was so cold outside that I could not even hold the cold receiver to my ear. It was so cold that I could not even take time to explain it to her! That year was the worst winter.

Aruna and Vishy Anand. Photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj

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