Blog day out

Hello Reader, 

The struggle (you can skip this part if you want)

It was a sunny morning, I woke up, stretched my arms and rubbed my eyes like any usual day. Then there was a sudden realization that there's an IndiBlogger meet today! I checked the time, it was 11 already. Then my thought process began, to go or not to go. The process took time as I am a child born in the era of early Pentium processors. So, after an hour or so, I decided, remembering the million dollar quotes like "Do not miss any opportunity, son" and started from my college hostel, which is very far (about 35-40 kms), from the venue. I somehow reached a nearby bus stop at 1:30, waited for about half an hour to board a BMTC bus to Majestic. It was already late. It was almost 2:30 when I reached Majestic. From there I took the help of an auto-wala to reach near the race course and then thanks to the auto-wala, who confused me and sent me to some other road. Then, after walking for about 5-10 minutes with the golden Sun smiling brightly on my head, I finally saw a distant board saying 'Fortune', across the road. Oh yes, I cursed my fortune for such an amazing start to the day. I crossed the road and I finally reached the venue: JP fortune park. 

The first Impression

Excited to find the venue, I sprinted through the main gate when the guard stopped me at the gate and I explained to him that I need to go to the IndiBlogger meet and that I am a blogger, not a terrorist so he can let me in. I reached the reception which was completely deserted which made me think if I was in a trap or some kind of conspiracy. It was a sigh of relief when I reached the elevator to find a direction to the 2nd floor. I climbed. I finally opened the door to find the conference hall full of people. I checked the time again, 3 it was. I was about 1.5 hours late but then comparing myself to Indian railways I found myself less guilty. I straight away walked towards the end of the hall, took the last row and sat alone. Then I realized that nobody checked my Identity. So, before someone would kick me out, I peacefully went forward and registered myself, came back and sat.

When I reached, "30 seconds to fame" was going on and was about to end. I saw the bloggers introducing themselves and imitating their favorite characters. I regret reaching late to the event only because of the reason that I didn't get a chance to introduce myself to the blogging crowd. It was really hard to find anybody to talk with as I knew nobody so I kept quite for a very long time. Then there was a small 'quote-matching' game where I never found my match. The part of my quote said "Every saint has...". I roamed around the hall, screaming "Every saint has...anybody?" but couldn't find my match. So I ended up finishing the quote myself with "Every saint has a dirty secret". I saw people getting the goodies on their win.
Like an introvert, I went back and sat in the last row as the HP person spoke about the agenda on "being original". After the speech, there was food. Free, of course. In a very civic way, people formed a queue to hog in, suppressing their desire to attack on food. (pun intended) I took my half and roamed around looking at random people, trying to eavesdrop. "Oh! I am your regular reader...", "ya, that travel blog is mine...", "Alleppy! isn't that the place with boat houses..?", "arts and literature..hmm...ya..", "is that beautiful child yours..?", "Marketing is very important..", "Harry Potter is real..." blah-blah...

After the interval

After the 20 minute break, the show resumed with another game where we had to form a group of 15 and mime act a given book title. Now, I had a chance to meet some new people. As I hunted to find a group, a voice from behind called me to join their group. We named it "Original Photocopy" and we got to enact "The Jungle Book". And in 5 minutes we decided the roles and the act. I got the role of a book reader who reads the "Jungle book" and visualizes the story as the characters, the animals and Mowgli come upon the stage and do the rest of the wild-act.
Now, that was fun until the results were announced. There was first, second and worst place. We won none.
After this act, there was a small question-answer round, where randomly selected people from the audience had to answer to random questions asked by random people in the audience. Random questions such as "why this kolaveri di?" and "What if Raavan won over Ram?"
The best answers won HP printers and big round of applause.
The end of the show was near and I was almost heart-broke as I couldn't win anything, neither goodies nor Readers when the host Mr. Anoop, blessed us with the most amazing words of the evening,"left-overs can be snatched."
Before I ran to snatch the left overs, there was a all blogger photo click. And with a positive note, a smile and lots of memories, I left the place.

So, an amazing day comes to an end. The moral for me was: Be punctual.
Nevertheless, I hope to find some known faces in the next IndiBlogger Meet.
Until then, keep blogging and inspiring.

Ashish

A big Thanks to Haper-Collins, HP and IndiBlogger team.