February Blogger Meet
Published by Yazad Jal March 2nd, 2005 in Web WorldWe had a cozy meet that started in Café Coffee Day, InOrbit Mall, Malad. Amit, Veer and Anand (yes, unlike last time, he located us) were already there. After all the high reviews, I had to have a Qahwah in Malad. I confess it was my second Qahwah in February, but the VT Coffee Day makes it best.
Coffee shops in malls on a Sunday afternoon are not the quietest places around, so after Gaurav and Sarika arrived we wandered in search for a conversation place and eventually found a quiet corner in the food court. As I foraged around for food (long train journeys from deep south Bombay to distant suburbs make me hungry), the rest got into various debates. For once I restricted myself to just two bits and not more.
I love malls, and especially large supermarkets. Amid vociferous protests I checked out the “giant hypermarket.” Nice, but very clautrophobic. Bought some strawberries to pacify the irate bloggers waiting for me! We had a final coffee (where I had to fight to get milk on the side for my Americano) and parted.
Anand, Veer and I hopped into an autorickshaw to take us to Malad station. During the auto ride and the return train journey, I had some wonderful conversations with both on diverse topics ranging from blogstreet’s new initiatives to mathematics (Anand is an expert in Galois theory).
Next bloggers meet will be on the last sunday of March, (the 27th) but I will be in Lucknow then. As I check the calendar, I see the last sunday of April is the 24th — Mr. Tendulkar’s birthday (but more importantly, it’s also my sweetheart’s birthday), so May it may be before I hobnob with Bombay’s bloggers again!
Update (March 3): Amit Varma posts his version of the meet here. Apologies to Rahul Bhatia for forgetting that he too was there–old age does things to my memory!
Update (March 4): Anand of Locana posts briefly on the meet. I knew he’d never been to a blogger’s meet, but didn’t know he was a complete virgin in the area!
I had never met a blogger before this meet. I find it tough to believe but that’s the truth.
Missed this one too! woe is me!!
I think we should have a mini meet otherwise as you say, it may be May before we meet!
I haven’t been to India for about a year now but from what I have been reading about it (and hearing about it from other NRI friends who visit) it seems so like what the US used to be in the 80s. Rampant consumerism, work hard play hard, hanging around malls, praising the convenience of the hypermart.
In the US the ‘intellectuals’ wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around in a mall and would never shop at a Wal Mart. As far as drinking coffee, again the intellectual wouldn’t be caught dead in a Starbucks (even though Seattle is its home) but would be in a mom and pop coffee shop which serves outrageously expensive coffee in real mugs.
Being a cheap Indian and not considering myself a part of the intellectual elite - I happily gulp down Starbucks coffee and quite like a wander down the mall (though I stay away from Wal Mart).
Just interesting to note the differences .
I have been following several of the ‘desi’ blogs for some time now. It would be quite interesting to meet with the desi bloggers on my next trip to India which is in the next 7 days. Unfortunately I will probably be leaving bombay before your next meet. So in case you guys have a mini meet before the 26th, I would definitely like to crash the party.
Um, whose idea was this last-Sunday-of-the-month thingie? I’ll be in Bangalore on the 27th, vigorously covering the third Test between India and Pakistan. Why not the first Sunday of next month (April 3)? Please!
Am posting on the meet soon, don’t worry.
How about the second Sunday of April? I reach Mumbai slightly past midnight on the 4th.
Why restrict bloggers meets to just a monthly frequency? Even two bloggers can meet up.
Ck, I have to say that you echoed my very thoughts. I don’t know whether rampant consumerism is good or bad (the economists yazad and others know it better) but one can really feel it in the urban India. Work hard and party harder is the mantra of the day. Mumbai is more like attrition of the vehicles by the city but an auto-centric lifestyle is on the rise. I guess people have to hang out at “private” conditioned spaces such as malls, multiplexes, etc. as they don’t have other choices such as sprawling parks, beautiful water’s edges and so on. Let’s see how and where all of this goes.
There is nothing wrong with consumerism - but it is the lack of social responsibility which is supposed to go hand in hand with consumerism is what I find lacking in India.
Now this may be just a prsonal experience and I should not use it to draw conclusions, but I think it is representative. My friends who are in India can all be broadly termed successful, young professionals. Having graduated from St. Xavier’s Mumbai, they all went on to get advanced degrees mostly in the MBA field and now all work for baks, investment agencies and MNCs. They all earn good money and when I was in India last I nticed that they thik nothing of going out and having a good time and don’t blink at the Rs. 1000 cover at the door to clubs and happily drop down Rs. 5000 for a single night of partying. All well and good though the one think I noticed was the rabble of malnourished urchins hanging aorund teh door of these clubs rubbing heir bellies and asking for Re. 1 to feed themselves. Of course I don’t expect my friends to not have fun and solve the problems of India but something struck me as wrong as I saw the long line of youngsters queuing up at the door and handing over Rs. 1000 just to get in while there were these malnoursihed people, stomachs bloated with parasites begging for a single rupee. No I am no starnger to poverty in India - I was born and raised in India and lived there for 21 years. There have always been vast inequalities but perhaps only now do I see the true scale of it.
Another illustrative example of the lack of compassion - after the tsunami hit, I sent $150 to my mother so she could contribute it to a tsunami fund. My firm here in Seattle sent $5000 to various charities involved in the tsunami relief. In conversations with my freinds I asked how much they had given and to which charities - the answer was zilch, nada, not one paise. Here is a firm in Seattle along with thousands of others send $5000 to a country 10,000 miles away for just one reason - comapssion and caring for a fellow human being. I sent what I could afford knowing that it was just a drop in the bucket. But here is teh pride of India who think nothing of dropping Rs. 6000 on a single night of merriment but can’t be bothered sending even 1/2 of that to their OWN countrymen who are suffering, in some cases a few hundred miles away.
To the Indian readers of Yazad’s blog - did any of you contribute in anyway. I am hoping to hear that my friends in Bombay just happen to be selfish bastards and the same cannot be said for the rest of the Indians.
Ck / Rahul, I think consumerism is worthy of a debate in itself. Both of you have blogs: would be great if you state your views and we can take it from there.
Regarding blogger meets, let’s keep to the last sunday of the month as an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
Doesn’t stop us from meeting otherwise. Let mini-meets and blind dates flourish!