Mumbai Blogger's Meet

One's very first blogger's meet was attended, and while one cannot speak for all the attendees, one had a jolly good time.

The words flew fast and furious, as a multitude of topics were discussed - ranging from programming, photography, marriage, sexuality, previous blog meets and of course reservations - disputed and dismissed, sometimes all three at the same time.

We apologise profusely to those bloggers, whom we might have deafened/frightened/horrified with our...errr...vociferous (?) reactions to the issues being discussed.

Our impressions of some of the bloggers (because we didn't get to speak to all of them as much as we would've liked to):

1) Amit was a lot less vocal than we expected. Although to be fair, he would have had to be a lot more than just vocal, to be heard above the din (yours truly being one of it's main contributors).

2) The Idea smithy was all spunk and fire and feminism and SO the kind of woman we'd *totally* ask out if we were a guy. Or gay. Since we're neither, we'll just say, she's awesome fun.

3) Evenstar, dainty and delicate and Juliet-like; one could almost picture her standing in a latticed balcony, leaning her cheek upon her hand. Until she mentioned, in her soft voice, that she'd just gotten back from attending an anti-reservation protest at Azad Maidan (which turned out - as she discovered later - to be a pro-reservation rally, but hey, she was there. Which is more than we can say for ourselves). The things these Juliet-like women get upto these days, I tell you!

4) Sakshi was just like her blog; straightforward and very chilled out.

5) Oh then, there was the mysterious Mr. Gera (whom we find mysterious primarily because we have no idea what his first name is) who spent a lot of time explaining how, if you took the code from the back of his t-shirt, and inserted it into the script on the front of his t-shirt, you would get four small camels.

We're terribly unclear about how exactly this was supposed to happen, but there you have it.

Mr. Gera helpfully added - in between turning round and round to show everyone the front and the back of his t-shirt - that it was 'absolutely useless, but totally cool'.

And you know, somehow, at that point of time? It made perfect sense.

6) The Bombay Addict, as his name suggests, a true blue Mumbaikar. From Uttar Pradesh. We found we had a bit of a wavelength-matching-thingy going on here. Until he played devil's advocate over the reservations issue, after which we screamed and bit his head off. We're sorry we bit your head off, Anupam.

7) Then there was young Akshay, of Trivial Matters who was, pestered incessantly to hire us as his pappu* (person who brings him chai, polishes his lenses, sets up camera...you get the idea), declared undying love to, and proposed marriage to, all within the space of five minutes, under the benevolent influence of two gimlets.

Akshay, displaying remarkable intelligence for one so young (also, one who consumed in succession, one baby milk shake** and two (or was that one?) mojitos), declined all three proposals. Smart kid!

8) The bachpan-ke-buddies from Rajasthan, Parijat and Piyush, were quite unlike what we expected IIT students to be. I mean, you know how you definitely expect IIT students to be intelligent, but not a whole lot more than that? These two were *bright*. And refreshingly laid-back.

9) Vijay. Who came, who saw and who was probably left speechless with horror/shock/disbelief because he spoke all of ten words in the four hours that he was there. Although he did take up the difficult task of typing out all fifteen names and URLs and then mailing them across to all fifteen of us. Thank you Vijay!

The rest of the attendees (whom we *really* wished we could've spoken to more) were, Zack, Saket, Anthony and Selvin.

All in all, it was an evening well spent. To quote a certain famous blogger, fun came.

The trip back home was a whole other story though. The trains were running terribly late, because of something called a 'Jumbo Block' at Borivli. When it did arrive (the train, that is), it was packed closer than a can of sardines and we ended up getting a full-body-massage with essential oils of everybody else (eeewww, I know. Totally). But you know what? This compartment, that's hot and humid and filled with five times more people than it was ever meant to hold; there's no screaming, no tempers flaring. In fact, the women are smiling, some are actually laughing and everyone is helping everyone get some place to stand. Dupattas are being cheerfully disentangled, children are being pushed towards their mothers, single chappals are being laughingly returned to their owners.

Do you see why I love this city?


*Because *everyone* seems to have a more interesting job than we do!
** Which was a disturbing shade of pink.