The Original IndiBlogger Meet

How many bloggers do you need to mime ‘Robin Hood’? Fifteen apparently! With 15 members we could enact the whole play. But it becomes a challenge when all you have to do is mime. Final result was utter chaos. Fifteen of us got on stage with no clue what we were supposed to do. But surprisingly someone from the audience still managed to guess right, denying us even the worst team award, which was claimed by Dr. Vidya Sury’s team claiming to have created such a complicated mime that no one could possibly guess it. The only saving grace of our team was our captain Gyan Ban, who reprised the role of a person with dual personality disorder confused whether he was a bandit from ancient English literature or a cop from modern day Hindi movies.


In case people are wondering what the above is all about, that was about the Indi Blogger meet sponsored by Harper Collins and HP at the Fortune Capital Hotel. Then there was also samosas, sandwiches, gulab jamuns , rolls and tea. Unfortunately, no cake though. Last meet Leo had given feedback that there should be chocolate cake instead of plain vanilla cake. So seems like they removed cake itself from the menu to shift attention from the food. But then food happens to be the best aspect of the meet as that is when you can move around freely and talk to fellow bloggers. There were also pen drives, headsets, books published by Harper Collins, printers and t-shirts. After all can one deny the charm free stuff holds for us Indians? Suresh was awarded a book each for his bald head and broken wrist. Naba was awarded a USB drive for coughing. Princess Poo was awarded a head set for being scolded by her mother. Guess this gives people some pointers on what all one needs to do to win free stuff at Indi Bloggers meets, which incidentally was also one of the topics discussed in the final section of the met.

The sponsors’ message for the meet was to fight against piracy and fakes. The sponsor rambled a bit about advantages of using original HP cartridges and then let some bloggers speak about their experiences of their content being duplicated. It was a good idea by the sponsors to relate the two. But strangely the topic did not generate the kind of Kolaveri it usually does on facebook discussions on plagiarism. ‘Why Kolaveri di’ was incidentally another topic in the final section of the meet. Mr. Balasubramaniam Meghanathan bagged a printer by sharing his tale of woe on this topic – apparently that is all there is left for him to say to his wife after twelve years of marriage.

True to the maxim that bloggers should be seen and not heard, neither I nor Leo said anything when our turn came in 30 seconds of fame. Guess the original saying was with respect to children. Talking of children, we had a 10 year old blogger in our midst, Sidharth the son of another blogger Rachna, who took away a printer for his enthusiastic participation. A lot of bloggers however used the 30 seconds of fame to showcase their multi-faceted talent. Rachna herself enthralled us all with her singing talent. Saro Sena impressed us with her linguistic skills while Balu, never the one to miss an opportunity did a Manmohan Singh act. Farida and Raghav never fail to impress the audience with their tale of grit and determination to fight against the tough odds life had thrown at them. They are after all the true heroes of blog-o-sphere who blog for the purpose of inspiring people to emulate them and take life in their stride.

Last but not the least, we had our own fun in our mini gang, which is actually the main reason I attend meets other than the chance to meet folks who I have known in blog-o-sphere in person. The known bloggers I met the first time in person this time were Rachna, Saro Sena and Ranjit Raj. Our fun team this time had Princess Poo, Naba, Tanmayee, Nethra, Nimisha, Siddesh and Deepika Kabe. Notable absentees were Sibi Mathew, Ghanchakkar, Tina, Santosh and Harsha. We stuck on staunchly together despite conspiracies by the Indiblogger team to disperse us in the larger crowd. We managed to get an instant photograph clicked in Sidhesh's trademark Ravan pose as well, which now adorns our Bangalore Bloggers Bistro group.

That’s it I guess. So long and thank you for all the fish, Team Indiblogger. Read fish as fun. Why should we call fun as fun only? Why can’t we call fun as fish and fish as fun? Maybe we can take that question for discussion in the next Indi Meet or I can somehow work that line cleverly in my introduction next time to make myself more visible.