Of Meets and Surprises...

I never really happened to write about the Indiblogger meets, did I? Tch tch. Keeping busy has just too many drawbacks for me to even keep track of. Anyhow, here I am now, with a brief report on the Sunday that I’m not gonna forget for a long long time to come.

10th June, 2012 – The Park Hotel, Connaught Place, New Delhi
I don’t know what it is between Indiblogger and The Park. It is such a depressing little place, almost like an office building. Even the DLF commercial tower across the road looks like a real hotel in front of the Park. Anyhow, the meets are always fun, so I’m not complaining! So there were two meets scheduled within one single day – something I haven’t ever experienced before and which came as a pleasant surprise when it was first announced.


The first one by Dove was a meet only for women bloggers, and needless to say, it saw lesser number of attendees. To cut the long story short, hair care experts were invited, extensive talks were held on common hair problems, their causes and prevention and the audience’s woes were heard and addressed. A TV ad model Shivani was also called to give a short speech/lecture/talk/whatever. I still haven’t been able to figure out what it was exactly that she wanted to bring across through that half-hour long string of non-coherent short anecdotes about her single status and her mother’s giving her a piece of her mind everyday and her ugly frizzy hair etc etc. I chose to ignore after a while, concentrating more on chatting and hobnobbing with the few friends I had made out there.



Need I mention that like all the Indiblogger meets, this one too had fun stuff being handed out to random people for no rhyme or reason just to promote Dove products? Though for a change this time I was a recipient of them too. Yay! I got a Dove gift hamper just for sporting streaked hair (seriously LAME, I know :P) and a voucher for online shopping worth rupees 1000 only because I was the only person till then to have said “thank you” at the end of my introduction. See, I told you – they need no rhyme or reason to give out goodies, just pure whim! At the end of the meet each participant got to take away a customized hamper containing a shampoo and a conditioner from the Dove product line that suits their hair the best. Oh, and a white Dove-Indiblogger t-shirt too. Thereafter we had a scrumptious lunch where I actually overate. I couldn’t help myself, it was just so good!!



There was a one-hour break before the Spice Mobiles meet. And we obviously utilized it in maaroing a round of apna CP (in the scorching sun) followed by an all-girls photo session in the hotel lobby ('coz as they say - girls will be girls!) Before the meet started we had this awesome conversation with one of the popular veteran bloggers on the Indian blogsphere – Mr. Arvind Passey – a lovely man with an amazing sense of humor and also the brand ambassador for Samsung. Cool eh? But the real fun began when the meet began and the host for the evening appeared. Guess who?? Rajiv Makhni, our very own NDTV Gadget Guru-cum-hottie-cum-house of talent! Okay I am totally drooling now. But the man really is a hell lot of fun. He cracked jokes, made sarcastic comments on anything and everything without anyone at all minding and had us all in splits throughout the meet and on the edge of our chairs by the end of the evening.





He gave out pen drives and Spice mobiles to participants, sometimes on whim and sometimes on their actually achieving certain feats. But the real surprise of the evening for ME came when I actually won a phone myself. Oh yes, I DID. And not even for nothing. The guy had announced that he would hand out phones to five people who introduced themselves in the best way, or those who could reproduce at the meet something that they blog about (muffins or cookies for instance). So I went out there in full josh, introduced myself, and offered to sing. Oh yeah, you all know I write about music too. Now the audience was suddenly excited and Rajiv taken aback for a second. But then he declared that if I satisfy the audience with my song, the phone is all mine. And so I sang a few lines from the one song that came to my mind at the moment – Celine Dion’s That’s The Way It Is. Here I stopped singing and there the place resounded with applause (or at least that’s what I like to believe). And I won myself a Spice Flo mobile! :D



Well, that was the crescendo of the meet for me at least. Rest everything I cannot seem to recall even half as clearly. There was this debate on something like how safe is our private information today, given the superb hacking technology available and no dearth of identity thieves all around us on the internet. It was interesting and boring in turns, nothing really worth being reproduced here. Another highlight of the evening was an AMAZING magic/mind-reading show put up by a budding mind reader (or magician?) Karan Singh that completely had each one of us gaping in astonishment. It was great! Then there was this speech by some boring tech guy from Spice, and that was when we decided it was time for our much needed pilgrimage to the ladies room. :P Following that was another delicious meal that was supposed to be tea but got converted into dinner, God knows how. The evening ended with a nerve wrecking quiz conducted by the oh-so-adorable Rajiv and lots and lots of phones being given out. I was really amazed to see such good general knowledge in people of stuff that I hardly had any idea about. It seriously made me feel ashamed of myself. :/



Anyhow the day was a super tiring but fulfilling one for me. Back home everyone kept gushing about all the goodies I seemed to have hoarded in a single day. I got at least five people laying claim on that phone I had won. What made them think I would actually part with something I had just bagged with such elan? Bleh.

The day ended with a tired me going off to sleep with a smile on my face (and a whole lot of hair care products on the shelf). The best part of the day was that I made some fabulous new friends in the blogging world and met some of those I had only met online yet never seen before. It was enriching, exciting and needless to say, a memorable experience. Look forward to many more such meets and treats!



A whole lot of pictures there on my FB page: here!

Jump, JUMP!

This post was gonna be about something else. Something totally different, trust me. But then I started listening to this particular song on loop and it is stuck in my head just so bad that I have to share it with you all before I can proceed further to more important stuff in the following posts.

Jump jump.. Kriss Kross will make ya.. Jump, JUMP!

Does it strike a chord somewhere? Oh yeah it is the 1990s superhit song Jump, by the American rapper duo Kriss Kross comprising of those two kids with similar names that were sort of reversible. The duo's trademark was the fact that they wore their over sized clothes backwards (Beat that Eminem!)


This song is just so addictive, I've literally been listening to it on continuous loop for like ever now. Okay, maybe just about half an hour. But it makes me wanna go all hip-hop and start dancing on the bed. THAT good. Check it out.



Doesn't it make you wanna jump too? And the fact that it's just two little boys singing it makes it so much more fun! Though everyone certainly might not like it. I'm just weird sometimes in my choice of songs. But it's a complete party song. The Mac Dad will make ya, Jump JUMP! :D

(Download the mp3 here if you like it)

Know of any more such songs that make you wanna jump? Let me know!

The Best Summer Vacation Ever

Summer holidays for me were never ever the same! This year is seeing a total upheaval of my idea of an ideal summer vacation. So what's the big difference? TRAVEL it is! Not beyond the four walls of the city, oh no; how I wish I could though. But this time round, I am spending my holidays traveling around town, visiting all those places I'd never seen, learning the historical nuances and different facets of the city that I call home - the place where my heart lies.


Delhi is a melting pot of cultures and traditions from across the world. It is a place where a mosque, a temple and a gurudwara can stand together in complete harmony and attract visitors of all castes and religious beliefs. If we have typical South Indian food joints and Punjabi dhabas around every other nukkad, we also have restaurants in the city serving British breakfast and authentic Chinese and Thai food. If there is the Sacred Heart Cathedral, there is also the Jama Masjid here.

There are said to have been seven cities of Delhi, established by different dynasties and rulers in different eras to suit their own whims and fancies. Invaders came, conquered, built shrines, gardens and institutions, and were then overthrown only to pave way for newer rulers, giving us a rich architectural heritage in the process. Travelers and backpackers from across the world as well as India throng Delhi throughout the year to discover the history of the ruins of monuments from the Mughal era, and to witness the traditional celebrations and religious rituals held in the many different places of worship to be found here. Delhi is indeed a traveler's true delight.



Now my love for my city hasn't been any secret from anyone. My family knows that if given the slightest chance, I'll take off with a backpack and return home God-knows-when with a ghastly tan and more to share than I can even mouth. My closest friends know my obsession with history and historical places. So much so that I was smuggled out to Safdarjung Tomb on my last birthday, only to have me cut my birthday cake there. So I kinda celebrated my BIRTHDAY at someone's BURIAL PLACE. And I didn't mind in the least. Seriously.

Given all I've said above or have ever given out about my true passions, getting to discover Delhi - in a new light, from a completely new angle - is heaven on earth for me. I've started my pursuits already, and plan to write about my travels. Now I should admit here that I don't know the first thing about writing a good travelogue. I am not a very organized traveler, nor a very smart one at that. I end up getting lost sometimes, covering several kilometers on foot in the scorching Delhi heat and falling sick once I'm back home. I plan very less, rely on my unreliable mobile internet connection for necessary info, don't even use GPS like a smartphone user normally would. I don't apply sunscreen, fumble with my umbrella on the crowded streets and end up all messy and confused in the middle of nowhere sometimes. But the only thing that matters amidst all of this craziness is that I love every minute of it. I would give up any amount of luxury and comfort of the air conditioned indoors just to be able to immerse myself in the history of a place or the magical ambiance that it radiates. And that's about it.

Yeah yeah, I get it. Enough about my perpetual love affair with craziness. I shall just conclude now, with a promise to come up with some fun (or boring!) travelogues in the coming weeks, covering monuments, temples, gurudwaras, mosques, food joints - basically any place that I end up at in the course of the best summer vacation ever. So I'll be seeing you around! :D

Excited!

Excitement (noun)
1. A feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness.
2. Something that arouses such a feeling; an exciting incident.



Yes, I am back again! And hell yeah, I AM EXCITED!
Though for now I am really short on time, so will just have to do with sharing with y'all little snippets of all the things that are making me excited. Here we go!

1. Tangy dreams coming true
My start-up Kalakhatta just got legally registered as a company. So now we aren't just Kalakhatta, we're Kalakhatta Networks Pvt. Ltd. Sounds like music to my ears, what do you think?
NOTE: The website's still under repair and upheaval. Do NOT judge by the look of it. We aim higher than we portray. ;)

2. It's rainin' MEETS!
Okay so I remember telling you all about how much fun last year's HP Originals Indiblogger meet in the city was. But tomorrow, it's gonna be a double whammy, with two Indiblogger meets in a single day! I'm all excited and chirpy. So the first meet is an all-women meet organized by Dove. (These Dove people are seriously on an intensive publicity campaign these days. They're everywhere your eyes can see! *phew*)
And the other one in the evening by Spice Mobiles isn't just confined to women, so it'll thankfully provide us with some contact with the real civilization, not just an Utopian one. A complete report on both the events is in the pipeline after tomorrow!

3. Holiday season!!!
This one should've come first, methinks. Nevertheless, it's holiday time again! That one time in the entire year when studies, assignments, files or grossly-dressed-up-and-always-smirking teachers can not bog you down. The time when you can let your spirit soar, to achieve those heights of self contentment that you've always dreamed of. *starry eyes*
Or maybe that is taking things too far. 'coz I still have a summer training to attend and a project to write and a thousand and one higher-studies-and-job-entrance exams to prepare for. So it isn't exactly such a rosy picture as I painted. But it's vacation time nevertheless,hence I get to choose when to do, what to do, and TO DO OR NOT TO DO. That's more than fine, methinks. :D

4. Freelance freelance
Yeah, like the game ghar ghar we used to play while we were kids, I've started playing freelance freelance after all. Just happened to bag an opportunity to write for this amazing tourism website that's gonna come up online in some time. I am doing reviews of places around Delhi worth visiting, for their Delhi portal. That includes traveling a lot and that too, to historical places, museums and other places of my interest. What better subject could I ever get to write about! I am thoroughly enjoying the work and the very fact that I'm being *paid* to do what I'd have otherwise done for free, for my sheer love of both travel and writing, makes it awesome. More on it as we go. :)

That's all from my side for now. But now that the evil monster called EXAM SEASON is dead (if only temporarily), I'll see you people around more often. Cheers to that. :)

The Gift of a Holiday

The sudden sound of the doorbell jolted me out of my reverie. It was the mailman with all the usual stuff – the electricity bill, a couple of mails wrongly delivered to my house owing to the confusing house numbers, and letters from relatives back home in India containing pictures and details of prospective Punjabi suitors. Sigh. They’ll never really give up trying to make me marry a man of their choice, I thought. More so, now that they thought I had learnt my lesson. Tossing away all the envelopes into the waste bin, I settled into my favorite old reclining chair facing the woods beyond the glass walls of the living room. I had taken to sitting here most of time that I was awake, looking out at the wilderness with a calm state of mind, unthinking, completely blank.


It had nearly been a month since my walk down the aisle to the altar. Nearly a month since that one moment when Paul decided to walk out of the churchyard, calling off the wedding on the verge of having said ‘I do’. I never quite understood what happened, refusing to believe for quite some time that he wasn’t coming back. When finally I did, this invisible but heavy pall of silence enveloped me and my entire world. I lived alone, spending my days in denial, trying not to think or dwell upon it. And yet, we all know how much that really works. I had nightmares where I was getting married to him and things went wrong at the last moment. The wedding cake would go bad, or my dress would suddenly vanish, or it would rain. I never seemed to be able to make it to the end vows. Calls from friends and relatives berating me over my choice of an American man or sympathizing with me over the tragedy just worsened everything. And so I shut myself in.

The phone suddenly rang, disturbing my chain of thoughts. It was Kyra. My best friend from college days, who had went on to become a successful designer leaving her law degree behind, only to give it all up again to turn globetrotter. Wish we all could be so daring. She had been present at the wedding…was my maid of honor. And as it suddenly came back to me, I hadn’t really seen any of her after that day. She hadn’t been there sympathizing with me, consoling me after my misfortune, telling me to put myself back together, go out and enjoy myself, to find someone new. Where had she been? I wanted to ask her but couldn't. And ever so typically of her, the sunshine of my life that she always had been, she didn’t ask me how I had been holding up. She just straightaway moved on to explaining where she had been all the past month – it turns out, she had been putting together the best getaway ever, just for the two of us. I was dumbfounded and to be honest, hesitant. I refused to go. But she wouldn’t listen to a word I said. She said I just had to come. She asked me to pack my bags and be ready to be picked up in an hour. And she hung up before I could protest.

A good two hours later, the front door to the house flew open, and in flew the one sight that forced me to cry out with joy for the first time in weeks. She looked radiant – beautiful, surprisingly tanned, svelte and even sunnier than the last time I had seen her. Kyra was full of life, always brimming with energy and always there to spread joy in everybody’s lives. For a split second I wanted to be her, to run away from the life I had been reduced to. As if reading my mind, she told me to quickly fetch my bags. On my admitting to not having packed any, not being in a mood to leave home at all, she took a full look at me and rolled her eyes. And then fished out an itinerary of items from her pocket. She really had every single bit planned! Right from the beach hut we’ll be renting, to the colors we’ll be wearing, to the sunscreen we’ll be using, everything was there on a sheet of paper! Her hatchback was waiting outside, loaded with all the supplies. Knowing me only too well, she had packed in everything for me too. So within the next fifteen minutes, we were out the door, driving down to the airport from where we were to board the plane to our destination – Martha’s Vineyard. My favorite track from our college days was playing (coincidence or conspiracy??) - *Oohh…Mysterious girl, I wanna get close to you…* I felt my heart take a leap, like it hadn’t for as long as I could remember.

Squatting on the beach on the north shore of the island, watching the sun rise over the water, reality dawned upon me. Kyra had known from the start that I needed this more than any of those condolences and encouraging sermons coming my way. With her sunshine ways, she had tossed my self confinement into the warm humid air of the beaches, reminding me of what a fun loving person I used to be. So I walked up to our rented house, disturbing Kyra in the middle of her morning yoga session, demanding her to bring out everything she had stashed away and to come have fun with me on the sands. Shocked but clearly happy, she took out her goodies – skimpy swim suits in the craziest of colors, over sized hot pink sunglasses and her latest obsession – the Lakme Sun Expert product that she had used all summer to keep away the awful sun while she traveled. One look at all that, and all my residual reluctance just went poof into the air. With such amazing planning and such an amazing friend, who really needs a man in her life anyway!

And so our itinerary for the day looks somewhat like this – a late morning jog around the length of the beach, to be spent reminiscing old times, college days and all the pranks our duo was notorious for, followed by a session of beach volleyball with a group of holidayers staying in the neighboring house (she has promised to introduce me to a very cute guy she happened to notice among them!!) Following that, a proper seafood lunch awaits us at one of the open air restaurants lining the beach. Up ahead on the list is an evening of cocktails and getting drunker than ever, finally ending the night with a grand bonfire that this place is well known for. Kyra insists that I’ll have to play the guitar and sing tonight, something I haven’t done in a long while now. But I don’t want to refuse. Somewhere deep inside I know I wanna do it. Whoa...Kyra's already done wonders to my confidence and willpower in ways I couldn't have imagined! And I really want to thank her for such a lovely holiday, one that helped me rediscover myself all over again. So here’s to the beautiful holiday, the awesome friend Kyra, and to a new beginning. Cheers!

(This post is my entry for the Lakme Diva Blogger contest.)

What to do if I'm being copied from?!

I am currently in a position I somehow haven't ever found myself in before. It may be a trivial matter for some. But as for me, I am still not sure as to what to make of it - appreciation or plagiarism?

So I came across this guy's profile on Facebook through some random coincidences or common friends, I don't really remember. I somehow happened to read his description of himself in the 'About' section. And it almost came as a hard smack in my face. A lot of the words and phrases used there were a direct lift from my blog. To be more precise, they had directly been copied from one of my popular posts and from my profile description on the blog. To top it all, the words that he had added himself make it seem like he sat with a Thesaurus in hand while writing this self-flattering, completely fake description of himself. See for yourself -

A meandering and at times promenading psyche in pursuit of his true destination(which honestly is an enigma to me at this moment) at the same time trying to do just to the intent of his creator(another obscurity) having a demeanor that is inscrutable(as Bermuda triangle could never manage to be);affably good at times and yet inexplicably weird at another......somewhat conspicuous and a little contumacious(incredulous is how I perceive it as :D ).....an enigma ........a simple guy with ambitious dreams...proud to be what i m ......

I do not really know for sure if any of this describes him or not, or if he is indeed as enigmatic and charming as he portrays himself to be through my words. But at this moment, I am not in the least obliged to give him credit for anything. I don't know is this is called plagiarism or not, or if this is illegal or not, but it is downright annoying and frustrating. He must have come across my blog, read my fiction piece, liked the imagery I had used and probably thought of using it to paint a mysterious and impressive picture of his own on that social hub where everyone only wants to impress everyone else. If doing such a naive thing gives someone a much needed ego boost (and maybe a few friend requests from random girls on Facebook), I won't be a killbuzz. I'm fine with my words being used to enhance someone's self image, as long as I know. So the right thing to do was to drop me a line, maybe appreciate my work (even if he had to lie about that!) and tell me that he wished to be able to use my words. I'm sure I'd never have refused to that, even if he were a sworn enemy. I wouldn't even have asked him to acknowledge it publicly. But being an ass and just copying stuff from the internet without making the slightest effort to give the creator credit for their work seems to comes way more easily to people nowadays. Guess it always has.

I hope that guy reads this. Because I surely won't be doing anything further than writing about it here. If someone's being a jerk, doesn't always mean I have to be one too. Or maybe I can, but not at the same level surely. A dose of their own medicine usually suffices. Hope it did. ;)

P.S. Please, God, give some sense of decency to people. I'd really like that. Thank you.

Writers can troll too!

Apparently, trolling is fast becoming a trend within the published writers' community too. Many modern Indian writers are taking digs at people in their books these days (don't know about foreign writers). I was reading this book The Secret of the Nagas by Amish Tripathi the other day, and as I turned to page 186 and read it through, I was really in splits for a good five minutes. Wondering what was it I saw?? Take a look:

Isn't it just too obvious how the writer intends to pun Bappi da?! I couldn't help but be surprised at the sheer unexpectedness of such a thing from a book like that, which is set in such an ancient time and is mostly fiction. I mean, seriously? From rage comics on the internet to real life practice to the published word as well, trolling has indeed come a long way. I never thought I'd ever include any rage comic stuff on my blog, but as it turns out, things don't always take the course you expect them to take in life. (I must admit though, it's real fun to read rage comics *religious follower* xD)

Nothing more from my side for now. So till I write again, keep trolling!