Lunch, anyone ? सावकाश जेवा ....ब्लॉगत ब्लॉगत जेवा .....

Once upon a time, not too long ago, there were 6 wordoholics. They wrote blogs. Their own, and then they commented on others' blogs.

They decided to meet.

Different types, ranging from a young working mother immersed in the mechanics and psychology of schooling 2 little girls, to a young man who balanced his job with a keen observation of what we call everyday life, (and a penchant for radio interviews :-) ; a gentleman who actually blogged as two, and excelled at expression in his native language, commuted 200 kms every weekend, and stayed back just to meet these unknown friends; a corporate type who wrote non-corporate blogs and limericks, and commentaries on happenings around him; and a housewife, retired from a job, waxing nostalagic on her blog, with fingers itching to dance across the keyboard, something that was a big part of her job earlier....


They had another wordoholic friend, a lady , who happened to have flown in from 12,000 miles away, and everyone decided to meet .

See the road that travels up the center of the photo with the green on one side, and buildings on the other ? Thats S. V. Rd, an arterial road in the western suburbs. Well, they decided to meet in Andheri, a suburb of Mumbai, which would be somewhere at the top end of the road.

They decided to meet in the courtyard of a place called the Shoppers Stop shown here. Some came in early, browsed around the bookshops, and then waited. The ladies came by , in rickshas, each from far flung parts of Mumbai.

Of course , the rickshas stopped here and there, they looked around , since except for one person, who dares to appear as himself on his blog, no one had seen anyone else.

Maybe everyone had an invisble halo that screamed "blogspot", maybe everyone had a look of discovery on their face, maybe everyone was actually smarter than they thought, but THEY MET! (Except for one. A lady, who was braving the worst kind of traffic to make it in time, to see people she had never met. She was directed to come to the restaurant directly.... )

Unfortunately, the lady who flew down from the US of A, couldn't make it, and this effort is an attempt at making her feel as if she was there....

Just opposite Shoppers Stop, there is a nice place called RadhaKrishna. Besides being named after our deities, we had heard nice things about it, and we decided to go there for lunch.

This is how it might have looked without any bloggers inside. Just as we were getting seated, the final blogger in the ricksha, arrived and the youngest fellow in the group, in correct Indian style, went outside to meet her and escort her in.

See the table at the right bottom corner ? That's where we had lunch. The place was full.

Did everyone look like we thought they would ? Did we have a mental image about how a person would look after being a regular reader of his/her blog ?

It is strange, but for people like us from 3 different states, and at least 3 different languages, there wasn't any huge surprise element .

Everyone just sat down, and basically, got along like a house on fire ..:-)

Lots of chats, interspersed between delicious rotis and vegetable gravies, with a cooling yogurt raita, and a wonderful mixed vegetable pulao, and us oldies indulgently allowed the youngsters to tuck in the fruit salad with ice cream, as we discussed, vegan diets, kilograms lost and gained, and miles walked.

Some gifts were exchanged. Maybe ten years hence when blogspot gets upgraded to something you cant remember, and blogs have a 25 digit number which you say to the screen instead of typing it in , or something, we can all look back at the wonderful coffee mugs given to us by Kavi, with all the participating folks' blogsites printed on there.....

All good things at a Saturday lunch come to an end, and so did this meeting.

Here's a view of the road we had to cross, showing probably 1/100th of the traffic that was actually around. But this is to give you an idea of the variety. And no, we didn't jump over the road divider.


I have with me the coffee mug meant for the blogger at My2 cents. I hope we see her before she returns to the US.


And now, if you excuse me, I must go have a nice cup of ginger tea, in the wonderful bloggy mug......