Sunday, January 20, 2013

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.

If you liked this you may like to check out the index of other posts of this genre or read a selection of similar posts.

39 comments:

  1. yup, this was #originalcopy of bloggers' meet unlike #nokiaapps :)

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  2. Just logged in to see this post.. and man you are not just quick witted but really quick writer too. Like usual, you never fail to make me smile with your humor.

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  3. only you can write a humor post on indimeat :D. absolutely enjoyed the read!! well, indiblogger rocks!! at least my blog is surviving because of them.

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  4. I read all three posts by your gang. And, I think there is nothing else left to say :). It was surely a lot of fun with Anoop's tongue-in-cheek compering and interaction with bloggers. A complete laugh riot! Thanks for the recap!

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    1. Good that you enjoyed both the meet and the recap, Rachna!

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  5. Glad to see all of you having a wonderful time! Followed it on twitter a bit, tweeted a hello to everyone too :)

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    1. Good to hear from you Arti after a long while!

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  6. It was fun, wasn't it? :-)

    Enjoyed your post, Suresh! And cya at the next one :D

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    1. Yes! It was fun - as was your winning answer for why your team was the worst miming performance :) Great to see you here and looking forward to meeting you at the next meet.

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  7. It was nice to get to meet you again, Sir. Had loads of fun. This meet was definitely better than the Nokia one for sure. :)

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  8. Great had the meet was planned and executed better than the last one, sad that I had to miss out and good to know all of guys won goodies :)

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    1. Missed you Santosh! Next meet - and, maybe, next time on your bird hunting you can introduce me to the world of birds!

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  9. Amazing account of the meet!! The way you described Naba winning the headphones was howlarious!! Must have been a thoroughly enjoyable meet.

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  10. Sorry abt ur hand, i honestly thought it was just a jibe :)

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    1. It is all too real, Saro! As it keeps reminding me every time I type for too long :)

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  11. Gosh! You managed to wangle something out of Anoop? Remind me to give you an award when we meet, for that feat :) I have tried every trick under the sun to make him part with stuff to no avail. Great recap of the event.

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    1. Ah! Now that will be an award for a worthy achievement :)

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  12. Wow, SO many known names there in your post! You guys met for real :)
    Indi meets are so much fun, I am so jealous of the Bangalore crowd :(

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    1. Oh! Yeah, we did, Akanksha! Great crowd we have here and more meets here than elsewhere it seems :)

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  13. Very lucky, Ashwini! And a great group of blogger friends as well!

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  14. Hi CS,

    All of you had quite a ball of a time socializing with the blogging fraternity. The nearest meet that I can attend is at Mumbai, will have to be watchful of the date, so as not to miss it.
    These meets sure seem like loads of fun. Loved reading about the experiences of the meet. :)

    Regards

    Jay
    My Blog | My Entry to Indiblogger Get Published

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  15. Nice write up, took me there again. :)

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  16. I wanted to interact with many but I was either shy or scared !
    Like u told tea time shud have been for longer or they must have rotated the groups continously so that all interact (like in many corporate events)
    but still had good time
    and ya Good post

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    1. Good that we had those few minutes in the queue of tea!

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  17. This is the funniest of the posts on the event I have read till now. I can see you guys had a lot of fun. We had a get-together of bloggers in Hyd at the same time as you but of course on a much smaller scale. Maybe such events will make it possible for all of us to connect in person someday soon. Respects to Indi for creating such a platform.

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    1. I am sure you guys had a lot of fun too Subho!

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  18. You guys are having a ball and playing ball :D

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  19. Suresh,I am still cursing my receding hairline and waiting in vain for the shining plate...maybe my wish will be fulfilled by the next meet!!!

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  20. Indiblogger meets, when sponsered, are more of promotion an less of meet. The only thing you enjoy is meeting the known blogger friends.

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    1. As long as there is time to meet blogger friends - and there was in this meet.

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