Every morning after a cup of tea, I walk around
the pages of Face book, Twitter, blogs and other social media channels to
update myself with the latest events. I normally see the same set of people, most
of them are unknown to me personally, but I know them well from their profile
pictures, their postings and the news that we share.
I am never sure who reads my blog but I was
surprised when I was invited by Windchimes
to participate in Lavasa Women’s Drive2011 along with seven more bloggers to spend two days of leisure and tour
around the city.
That was the first time that I met bloggers whom
I had never met before. I may be very active online but otherwise I am quite
reserved and don’t interact freely with strangers. It took me some time to
interact but others were very friendly and full of news to share, soon I was
enjoying with them, laughing, chatting and touring around the city.
Nisha Jha, the travel blogger, Kiran, blogger and author, Leela Shakti, DNA sub-editorand author, Monika Manchanda, the food blogger, Ramya Pandyan, a netaholicblogger, Anuradha Shankar, thetravel blogger, and Shashi, shoppingstories blogger were the eight bloggers whom I met the first time and
Biswajit was our friend, our guide fromWindchimes, who would calm our nerves when things went wrong.
We spend two days together in the beautiful city
of Lavasa and then we went on with our lives with just the memorable time
etched into my mind.
Over the period of one year, everybody has progressed
exceptionally well in their own field. I wanted to meet them all, at least once
again, but getting them under one roof was bound to be a difficult task. Every
month I asked if it was possible to meet up but always somebody was busy. Three
months passed but we were not able to find common dates to suit all. I had
almost given up and decided to try for one last time and wrote a final mail
asking
‘Will we ever meet?”
Kiran responded saying that we could meet this
coming Saturday but Shakti had already planned for that week-end and said she
couldn’t meet.
I wanted
to call it off again but this idea had stretched too long and we decided to go
ahead with whosoever was free on that Saturday. We discussed various venues and
finally zeroed it at Lemon Tree at Bandra.
At 1pm, Biswajit send me the message that he had
already arrived and was waiting at the top floor of the restaurant. I waited
for Nisha, since she was coming from Panvel, 3hours away from Bandra, to attend
this meet-up. We met at the end of my lane and took an autoride to the venue.
The ambience at this restaurant was very soothing
and peaceful with beautiful decorative plates, vases and blue lanterns on the wall, there were artistically painted white logs and branches on the ceiling, the etched floral glass on the windows, white and mustard paint on the walls and white shades to keep the sunlight out.
The tables were distantly placed with enough
privacy to each group. We sat comfortably on the soft seats with ample of cushions
of different sizes to lean on. The quorum was not complete, unfortunately, Monica is in
Bangalore, Shakti had her college reunion and Kiran had last minute guests. Five
of us met, ordered the drinks and refreshed our memories of the days spend at
Lavasa..
When bloggers meet what do they talk?
Blogging of course.
We started the meals with drinks, each one ordering
their own preferences; they had interesting combination on their menu card like
spicy guava, blue berry yogurt, Chunky Muesli, etc. Over the drinks, Ramya, who now conducts regular workshops on blogging, discussed the various methods she used in her workshops and
how she uses visuals and content to her blogs to make it interesting.
The next, we ordered the starters like
Mediterrian grilled salad, Cajun potatoes and chicken in green pepper sauce. In
between our chat, we clicked few pictures of the food as they arrived, which
amused the waitress a lot, who was so distracted that she brought the wrong
order of potatoes, which had to be moved away before we finish off the plate. This
year 2012, I had made a second trip toLavasa again with other set of people, I was happy to share my experience
and how different it was from my last visit.
For the mains we had Basil Ravioli of oven dried
tomatoes and olives, a Shepherd pie, Ratatatoville Risotto and vegetarian
sandwich platter. The food was quite bland to our taste and we had to order
extra tomato chilie sauce and Mustard sauce to alter the taste. I was specially amused by this long black pepper grinder which looked like a weapon of mass destruction. We continued our chat on different topics. Nisha had just
returned from the Malayasian BloggersMeet and Award Nite, and also had spent two months, working with
NGO in Cambodia teaching school kids in the rural areas. It was interesting to
hear her stories of the natives and how rewarding it was to work for NGO and
contribute to the society in our own capability.
My Blue Berry Yogurt lasted throughout the meals;
sipping slowly and relishing every sip so when they ordered Crème Brulee and
Bitter chocolate and apricot mousse for deserts, I only watched them eat. Anu
spoke about her romance of apple pie and how she has enjoyed at different
places. I have never ever tried the apple pie but now am curious to try one at
Yazdaan Bakery when I visit South Mumbai next. Anu has been travelling widely
across India and she has a new hobby ofcollecting postcards and stamps of different countries, it was interesting
to hear about her adventurous travel tales across India.
The lunch lasted over four hours, bill was paid but
our conversation had not yet come to an end. We had to vacate the room for its
closure during lunch hour. We moved to another room downstairs, which was cozy
bar with wooden tables and chairs, to continue our conversation. Biswajit, who is the social media consultant,
discussed the importance of virtual interaction on net and how useful it is to
the corporate world.
Blogging is the informal way of advertising and
bloggers should not be taken for granted. There may be paid news in the
newspapers and magazine but a blogger cannot be hired, because he will be
honest and true to his content, he may not hesitate to give negative review if
he feels like it.
Blogging is a very powerful medium which plays
very important role in spreading awareness. There are no monetary benefits, it
is purely passion but much importance is given to the written word. A blogger
is invited to different events by corporate in the hope that they will get free
publicity, people feel pleased when they see a blogger making notes, clicking
pictures but they are never sure of what review they might get.
Blogger is not looking for free-bees; he is just
looking for news-worthy content, to share with those who are looking for right
kind of service, be it a new product, a film, an interesting place or an event.
Bloggers should never be taken for granted because they are creative, moody and
sometimes fun too.
We missed Monika, Kiran and Leela Shakti. We had
hoped to listen to Kiran Manral discuss her new book ‘Reluntant Detective’, or Shakti discuss her book, ’Imperfect Mr Right’ or Monika for her
culinary stunts of those beautiful cupcakes
But most of all I truly missed Monika gurgling
laughter.
