I visited Bangalore after
20 years this week-end. I remember Bangalore as a garden city with quaint
bungalows and wide clean streets. Development has changed the entire city, with
airport so far away that I was getting guilty pangs on having asked my family
to spend two hours to fetch me from airport to the city. But then I do not understand the roads and
would not be able to use public transport therefore had no choice but to depend
on the residents of the city to transport me around through the fractured roads.
I went for four days, two
days to meet-up the family whom I had not met for a long time and two days to
meet the members of S&C community of writers whom I had never met. This is the writer's community with whom I have interacted on FaceBook and we regularly share writing skill and ideas. This would be fun group for people taking writing classes as well. All the informal knowledge is shared through fun and jest.
Pragya Thakur, the
moderator of this group, was making the visit to Bangalore with her daughter,
Anushka, and wanted to meet with the members of the group. The event was
created on the FB and members were showing their interest in attending this
event “Revels 2012’ Jaya Chandra offered to host the event at her villa at Whitefield,
Gopu and JJ organized the event, arranging food, sound and logistics.
The meeting was in
Bangalore and I live in Mumbai, so why did I decide to travel all the way to
Bangalore to attend this event?
I am not even a great writer who can proudly
share about some extra-ordinary work with the rest of the group. But here was
an opportunity to re-visit the place, meet the family who has grown older by 20 years and to meet my faceBook friends whom I had never
met before but knew them only from their writings.
Friendship for me is complete only after I have met the people
personally and interacted with them in real world and this was my only chance
to meet the real people whose writings gave me so much happiness.
Confirming my attendance, I
booked my air-ticket and hotel room but was still nervous of meeting the FB
friends the first time. Through chat pages and phone calls, I exchanged
dialogue with few of them so that I would be comfortable when I met them
personally.
After spending two days with my family, at 2pm on 18th
Feb, I checked into my hotel room next to Pragya’s room, dumped my luggage and
immediately ran to her room to meet her and her daughter, Anoshka. The two
hours were spent enjoying JJ’s presence, Anoshka’s innocent chatter and dance, Pragya’s
chat and songs.
At 4pm, it was time to meet
the rest of the group at the hotel lobby. One by one, as if on a ramp, each
friend made her presence through the glass door, crinkling her eyes, recognizing
me from the images she had known of my virtual profile pictures and my animated
chat which now morphed into three-dimensional real person, to whom I stretched
my heart, tied a knot and strengthened the friendship into my real world.
With transport meticulously
arranged by Gopu and JJ, we drove in four cars, one behind another, making
sure that nobody got lost. At the dot of 5pm, we were greeted by
our gracious host, Jaya and Mahesh, who stood with open arms at the portico of their beautiful villa surrounded by greenery, the birds began to sing with the
orchestra filling the wind.
The artistic interiors of
the living room and the fragrance from Jaya’s kitchen of fritters cooking in
hot oil made me feel so much at home. Although it was time to mingle and familiarize,
the hunger pangs made me spend more time on munching and talking food. I stole
some time to feast on dhal-kachories, potato bajiyas, cheesy popcorns, spicy
wafers, crackers and strawberries till it was time to move out in the open
space, on the chairs spread out on grassy patch, at the back of the villa. The presence
of the mike and the spot lights spelled the seriousness of this meeting.
After the group photograph
and the formal introduction, the event ‘Revel 2012’ began.
Maitreyee, the one blessed
with the beauty and the brains, was the perfect one to start the reading
session followed by Sushmita and then one by one, we heard the play of words by
different writers as they read out their poetry and prose, so intelligently worded, flipping out from their scripts, filling the air with vivid images. I fumbled in my mind, not sure if I could
share my mediocre work with this creative group. Twice I inserted my hand into my
purse to extract my book and twice stuffed it back, not sure if I could
share.
Suddenly the power went
out. In darkness we sat, gazing up in the sky pointing out to constellation of
stars, the Orion and its bright stars, the great bear and the seven stars, the
little bear and the Polaris, we scanned the dark blue sky looking in all
directions and at that very instant, there was a song…..Pragya started to sing…in
the perfect stillness of the evening it was pleasant to the ears, soon
everybody joined in, some softly and some loud, then Gopu commenced, enthralled
us with his deep smooth voice, the memories of Kishore Kumar and Shamshad Begam
Akhtar came alive along with other singers long forgotten, the chairs shifted
in two groups and unplanned antakshri began.
Soon the lights came on,
ankatshri game abandoned; we tracked our steps back to ‘Revel 2012’
Uma got her ipad and tried
to include Ranjini (who was physically across seven seas but mentally with us)
into the group through skype. But the bad interconnectivity gave us just a
glimpse of her and tried as much as we could, I only managed to type a feeble “Hey”
With internet connected,
Madhavan was able to extract his writings from his blog, and later he and Richa read
‘Dhaiya re dhaiya’ Richa and Revathi read their winning entries of ‘short
stories competition’. By now, the phobia of reading my work was slowly fading, I plucked up enough courage, extracted my diary and my reading glasses from my handbag and waited for
my turn to read my poems. I was happy I did because it felt good to share my work and I
discovered it was not that bad after all.
As the evening progressed,
the air thinned, it was getting chilly, I borrowed a shawl from Jaya, wrapped
myself and sat cuddled, enjoying the reading and the off-handed hilarious one
liners of Madhavan thrown in between the serious readings.
Soon the theatre came alive with evocative
reading of the play ‘Taming of the Shrew’ by Kirtana and JJ
Not wanting to disturb the neighbors, we decided to move back to the
living room to continue the reading after dinner.
There was more reading to
be heard of Suja reading her published stories, of Pragya sharing a creative
writings, of Uma, Jaya, SeekerSought, Gopu, Gargi, Sangeeta and Shankari reading
their stories, but the clock on the wall glared at us, showing us the lateness
of the hour. The event had to be winded up in a jiffy but not before the
announcement of the lucky winners (Anitha Murthy, Revathi Siva Kumar and Richa
Dubey) of the ‘short story competition’ and taking home the prize.
It was a wonderful event,
worth the long distance trip that I had covered from Mumbai to Bangalore to attend;
I have acquired a new set of extended literary family that I hope to retain this friendship
for long……
