The HP Indiblogger Meet

When Leo, The Fool and I set out from my home enthusiastically to get to the Indiblogger meet little did we realize that we were in for a Bangalore Darshan. Leo and I were awash in wine and The Fool was drunk on words – having browsed what I must immodestly call my sizeable collection of books. When two winos start directing the only sober guy how to drive to a location, it is easy enough to imagine how straight a route we must have taken to the venue.

With a little confusing help from Leo’s GPS – which seemed to place us always at the place we were in fifteen minutes ago – and more useful guidance over phone by Ravan (who did not let us know which of his ten heads did the directing), we eventually reached the venue, by which time Pooja Pradeep had sent a dozen frantic SOS’s to rescue her from loneliness.

Within no time, the old rowdy gang of Nokia had assembled together at one table – Nabanita Dhar, Tanmayee Dev and all. Sibi, Santosh and Ghanchakkar were absent in this meet but the gaps were nobly filled in by Nethra and Nimisha. Anoop Zombie (the liveliest Zombie ever in history) tried his best to split us up but that was not to be. It is not like we guys meet up otherwise on a regular basis and, thus, would go seeking new company – it is only in the Indimeets that we do meet up.

Someone must explain to me this knack that Naba has of picking up prizes for the oddest achievements. I mean, if I coughed people give me scandalized looks and avoid me as though I were carrying the plague. When Naba coughs, Anoop hands over head-phones to her. I can understand ear-muffs to the rest of us but head-phones to Naba? How would that help her cough? This time, of course, I practically blackmailed him into handing over two books to me – one for being bald and the other for having had a fractured hand. (What do you mean – odd achievements? If you think either of it is a joke try to achieve one or the other and see if a book is a real consolation!)

The thirty seconds of fame was enlivened by the concerned bloggers acting out their favorite characters – from books or movies – and we even had a couple of bloggers belting out songs (NOT Munni badnaam hui!). That was followed by the HP chap seeking us to buy original products rather than duplicates – thereby justifying the ‘Original’ in the name of the meet. Striking odd poses for photographs – should I call them original poses? – was quite an odd encore to the motivation for the quest for originality but was fun.

The High tea that followed was sumptuous and, as ever, I had my modest helping of about a kilogram of food. This was also the time when we interacted with bloggers outside our table. Met Farida Rizwan, Rachna Parmar, Vidya Suri, Bemoneyaware, Gyanban, Balu and quite a few others in this period before we gathered again for fun and games!

Teams of fifteen made and miming of classic books/movies followed. We had to do Robin Hood and I was totally taken aback when someone from the audience actually recognized what we were miming. Must have been telepathy because an odd group of fifteen people standing on the stage doing whatever passed through their minds could have reminded no-one of Sherwood Forest. Not to mention that there was not a bow in sight nor was anyone even miming anything remotely resembling archery.

Ravan took over and had a few of the bloggers on stage to talk about some topics suggested by the audience. This part of the session was lively with the audience also involved in answering queries related to the topics. The stand-out - for me – was Balu whose reason for saying “Why this kolaveri di?” was that “After 12 years of marriage, that is the only question I can ask my wife!”

This meet was far more enjoyable than the previous one. The only suggestion I have would be to have a half hour when the stage is unoccupied and the mike silent (Ah! and, by the way, a reduction in the volume would have been a great help!) Maybe extending the High tea time would have helped in people getting around to meeting others for more time.

That, however, is probably nit-picking in the context of the time and trouble the organizers had put in to making the event enjoyable to all participants and the Inditeam deserved the felicitation that they got from a few of the more enterprising bloggers – for what they do on the Indiblogger platform as well as for organizing meets like this.

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