Intro-e-Extranjero - Pune bloggers meet

In the early month of November,

With the onset of winter,

In a city brimming with bloggers,

At a place with a wonderful decor,

And food to make the mouth water,

Was set a meet to gather

Not few, but a league of bloggers.

That was just an apotheosis of the "Out of the Blue" IndiBlogger meet held in the evergreen city of Pune. With the October heat dying down making way for the November chill winds to set in, it was time for the winter session of the IndiBlogger meet. This was going to be my very first experience of a kind. Not that I have never interacted with bloggers. 

This time I was expecting a room filled with 40 like-minded creative thinkers buzzing on a common topic, “BLOGGING”. The reason for 40 was that it was the number of people who had registered for the meet on Indiblogger. Having seen a few photos on various social networking sites of the meets held at different cities around India, I had pictured myself to enter into a room with 40 people sitting on chairs lined up to hear someone speak with a mike and the mike would be passed on from one person to the next. Nevertheless, I wasn't less excited.

10th of November was the date and being a Sunday, I didn't have to fight with the traffic to reach E-Square mall. "Out of the blue" was the place that was mentioned in the registration page and I walked in at sharp 11 AM. 

Woah!! To my surprise it wasn't a hall. However, there was a beautiful passageway adorned with artistic portraits on its wall which led to an open area where tables were set surrounded by wooden chairs with a blue and white striped cushion to rest the back.

                                       

 The ice-breaker was the introductions given by the blogger. With every introduction, each blogger was supposed to adhere to the theme which was to mention “What would they love to feast themselves for breakfast every morning?” There were different foods that every blogger fantasized on. Ranging from the traditional Poori Bhaji to Idli Sambar and Upma to kachori, each of our replies made every ones stomachs crave for some.

Without further ado, we were served with a variety of starters which were indeed very sumptuous. I loved them and they were indeed very indulging. But what was even more indulging was the talk I was having with the fellow bloggers. Sitting next to me was a boy cut hair girl who was clicking pictures of everything she saw. It was Tara Nair, an interior stylist by profession. Creative profile indeed!! 

To my other end was Chirag who had traveled all the way from Mumbai to make it for the meet. There were Mayuk and Shayani too who were techies like me but very much passionate about blogging. We had a blogger who gave me some fitness tips, thanks to the love handles that I have earned because of extra love from my mother.

 

Animesh who had organized the meet handled it very well. I still am laughing over the post you had read about your experiences with marriage. All the best to you and Sriram on your book!!

There were other veteran bloggers who were present as well (Sriram, Hari, Sandeep and Diwakar) whom I was meeting for the very first time. Not to forget, Vikram Karve Sir who has always inspired me with the way he blogs. Age was not a bar where members sharing the same platform were present. We had Uncle Phani Babu a septuagenarian who spoke about mystery shopping and Nikhil, a youngster who spoke about mobilejury.com.

It was indeed a very fruitful meet, as various topics were chosen to speak about. From Alexa rank to niche blogging, poetry to psychology and architecture to religion, every blogger present had a story to say on how he landed up into blogging.

 

I will do injustice if I forget to mention about -18 degrees an icecream and exclusive desert joint that served as the host accompanied with Out of the Blue for the meet. Two lovely ladies spoke about the variety of food served at Out of the Blue and the to-die-for ice cream sundaes at -18 degrees.

                        

 

After nibbling over a high calorized appetizing Mango Sundae, I headed home carrying memories about my very first blogger meet. We were those who met as strangers, shy and perplexed, but we left as friends who wished we had a lot more blogger meets to attend in the future.

I would like to end my post by quoting something that I had said at the meet,

“We writers and people of creative interests are gifted the power to make the readers think the way we do through our artistic pieces of work”

Happy Writing and Blogging!!!