Ze Mumbai Bloggers Meet

Its been quite some time, since I’ve written about blogger meets. As a matter of fact, I’ve attended quite a few of them – precisely five – ever since I’ve moved back to Mumbai, but I’ve been too lazy to write about them. Well, not this time… Better late than never.

There was a Mumbai Bloggers Meet scheduled on Saturday, at a joint called Thank God Its Friday inside the Infinity Mall at Lokhandwala’s, hosted by Saakshi Juneja and Amit Varma. Well, like always (okay, not always), to say that it was great fun would be a solid understatement. It was, in fact, mondo cool, to borrow a phrase from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I didn’t quite think it would turn out to be as exciting as it actually did, when I showed up at the appointed venue at exactly 3 p.m., to find no sign of either of the two hosts – no Amit Varma, no Saakshi woman. I knew that I had arrived too early, and that I needed to kill some time.

I peeked in again at at about 4 p.m., after duly killing some time at Landmark, which happens to be the best ever bookshop in Mumbai (exactly next door to this joint we are talking about), to be greeted by half a dozen bloggers who included Amit, Saakshi, Akshay, Vijay, and Divya, a really cute normal looking woman sporting an intriguing pierced eyebrow.

We were joined by a lot many other people from time to time, and the final tally went up to fifteen, if I’m not mistaken. Ramya came across as quite an enthusiastic individual, and it was great meeting up with Anupam, who was also the official cigarette supplier for the meet.
He referred to Akshay as THE Akshay, Amit as THE Amit, and to me as just plain Vulturo, and not THE Vulturo as you would have expected, despite the fact that there are no other Vulturos on the known blogosphere which left me a bit unhappy, but never mind…

It was great to catch up with Gera, after exactly exactly one whole year – the May ‘05 blogger meet to be precise – and I found him to be cool as he was, when I met him before. Gera also went about distributing a free software DVD to every blog meet attendee, which was responded to to with quite a lot of enthusiasm.

I also got an opportunity to meet up Selma once again after the January meet, who seemed to have made a lucky escape from a pro-reservations demonstation, which she mistakenly attended, while intending to go to an anti-reservations demonstration instead. BTW, Selma’s anti-reservations blogroll is great stuff: do check it out, if you haven’t done so all this time

A wide range of topics was discussed, and like every other blogger meet that I’ve attended, this one too broke up into two or more seperate blogger meets, as far as the discussions are concerned, for a brief period of time.

The subjects covered were SLR Cameras, Saakshi’s disgust for the blokes from the Save Indian Family foundation, Ramya’s disgust about some misogynist bloggers who were targeting herself and a few other counterparts, there was a mini-debate on reservations even though every attendee admitted to being anti-reservations, there was some talk on virginity, men-women relationships, gender stereotypes, IIPM (yes!), Web 2.0, some discussion on libertarian philosophy between myself, Amit and Gera, and I’m sure that there were many other things that I can’t recall right now.

Young Akshay had a photo session with the Ramsay Brothers, and everyone ribbed him about that. He appeared to be quite enthusiastic about a newly acquired female celebrity neighbor, and expressed a desire to interview her. I suggested that he wear a Sakshi juneja T-Shirt while approaching her.

The highlight of the blog meet was Ramya diligently persuading Amit Varma, for quite some time, to untie his hair, because she wanted to test out some undisclosed hypothesis. After Ramya’s having declared that she found men with long hair (apart from men with shaved heads) hot, Amit naturally wanted some more information before he actually did something like that. It was finally revealed that the theory in question was whether Amit looked like The Undertaker when he let his hair down, and Amit made it clear that he did not, and that it was not necessary for him to untie his hair to confirm it.

Also, there was this minor skirmish between Saakshi Juneja and Gera on the proposed venue for the next Blog Meet. Gera had proposed Powai (whichever way you pronounce it), while Saakshi had proposed Juhu. In true democratic spirit, a snap voting session took place and I don’t really need to tell you that Juhu won hands down. I personally wouldn’t have minded Hiranandani Gardens actually, but Juhu was obviously more convenient to the whole lot of people.

There was also a snap poll on which city was the best – Mumbai or Delhi – and for the first time in my life, I did not vote enthusiastically for Mumbai (as I would have done a year ago) and said that I found both of them equally good. I need not say that the aforementioned snap poll was won hands-down by Mumbai.

Needless to say, much fun came and there have been many other people who have summarised the proceedings in a more competent manner, than lousy old me. Here are some pointers:Amit, Saakshi, Divya, Parijat, Anupam, Vijay, Selvin, Tony

I, for one, shall look forward to more such meets. Glory to the blogosphere.