A very very beautiful and intelligent lady said “This was the best meet that ever happened before and this is the maximum turn out ever.”
Mouthshut writers had a meet in Delhi recently and the statement above is for the same.
After a lot of discussion, planning, phone calls and emails it was finally possible to gather the great minds at one place. The date decided was Saturday, 24th Feb 2006 and the venue was Café Coffee Day, CP at 0300hrs. (OK I am not gonna write the minutes of the meeting : P)
I arrived early, all excited and joyous at the thought of FINALLY getting together with people I have read and known through their reviews. I waited long and the waiters gave me such bad looks thinking I was occupying a table and not having anything and making an excuse “I am waiting for some people”.
Finally the wait ended when an intelligent looking man walked into the café and started looking at all the tables to try and find some one familiar. He looked all around and then suddenly my vague recollections of the past when I read some great reviews with the picture of a similar looking man came to my mind. He looked much like his picture and just a look at him explains that he has to be the brain behind some very fine reviews. Anuj Bhatnagar had finally reached but failed to recognize me ( :( ).
Soon to follow were Sujata and Sonika – best friends, hand in hand. Busy mothers had come after attending parent teacher meetings of their kids and were really friendly and warm right from the first glance. Such a picture perfect beauty that Sujata is, surely gave me major complexes ( : P). But truly she looks SO pretty. I was surprised to see both Sujata and Sonika, firstly because I had no clue that they were coming and secondly I wondered how they managed to look that young!
Mr. Fun-to-be-with reached next, 25 minutes late! Shyam really proved to stand upto Megha’s sms just minutes earlier. Followed by him were Sanjoy and Sumal .
Pulling together more chairs and a bigger table was getting tough and then suddenly some one came up with the issue I dreaded MOST …. “Who suggested this place?”. LOL. OK it was me and I agree that it wasn’t the ideal place. But since no one else was coming up with any ideas and I did not want the meet to fizz off, I came up with this, thinking it would be familiar to most of us.
So between the LOUD (read it as more louder than that) music of some unheard, strange rock music we all toiled to scream out in order to make the person next to us understand what we were talking! Lol… it wasn’t that bad… but nearly that! : P
Over some cups of hot chocolate with cream and cold coffee with ice cream we discussed everything possible about MS. Issues from who all Faisal was… hahaha (refer other members at the meet for details) to if anyone between us was an employee… and Shyam candidly asking each one if he/she was an employee of MS! Other important discussion was about Sanjoy’s beautiful (hazel) eyes and N _ _ _ !!! lol : P (don’t kill me for it please ok)
It took about 15 minutes for 8 adults to pay a bill of some Rs 700/- as we were strictly following Megha’s instructions. And I am sure the waiter will remember us for the currency we paid him in! : P
So after about 3 hours we all walked out (of the noisy place) and wished each other bbye’s with plans of another meet in the near future.
But for me, they all left me REALLY proud at the fact that my reviews on MS were praised and commented on by such lovely people and great minds!
Well I cannot miss the organizer of the event who managed to have a ‘great fall’ just a day before the meet and tear her ligament and not make it for the meet… Megha. Each one of us missed her so much and time and again one person or the other came up with “Oh she is missing on sumthing” or “I really wish she was here”!!! So well Megha here’s a thank you from all of us, for it would not have been possible without you. Thanks for your invisible presence … Mr. India ishtyle ! :) Hope to meet you soon.
PS - No mention of Mr Jaideep Khanduja for his having promised to come... and then having turned off his cell phone at that time! I tried ur number some 100 times!!!! :(
PPS – Shyam… you DO NOT dare put that pic ANYWHERE but the trash box of your camera!!!!