The First Bombay Bloggers' Meet

Quite a number of us Bombay Bloggers (well, actually: six) met yesterday for the first Bombay Bloggers' Meet (now, that sounds impressive). Over cups of coffee and iced tea at the Chowpatty Cafe Coffee Day, the six of us talked and argued (I actually spent more time listening, opening my mouth only for sips of iced tea) on numerous topics and issues.

Who all were there:

• Amit Varma - India Uncut, The Middle Stage, and 23 Yards


• Yazad Jal - AnarCapLib


• Dina Mehta - Conversations with Dina


• Ravikiran Rao - The Examined Life


• Zainab Bawa - CityBytes


• Mandar Talvekar - ink scrawl (that's me.)

What did we talk about - A number of things:

• Parsis (Yazad and Dina argued/discussed; the rest of us listened as they fought. It was fun as they were both supporting the same things)
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• Libertarianism (to be expected with Yazad present)


• Atheism (Amit and Yazad), Agnosticism (Dina Mehta), and "Occasional Atheism" (me)


• Power of Blogging


• Google Adsense


• Blogging fundas (Blogstreet, Instapundit, Blogmela, Blogrolls . . .)


• Food (Yazad mentioned this wonderful eating joint somewhere; most probably it will be the venue of the next Bloggers' Meet)


• Corporate Blogging (Only Dina and I were interested, the others didn't allow the topic to take-off)


• Blog Walks (the next meet will have a theme or a blogwalk?)


• Wikis


• Ah yes! Yazad was "complimented" for being a "boyish looking 32 year old."

People also aired their views on:

• If the government has banned driving two-wheelers without helmets, should it also ban smoking? Using the same logic (that of making helmets compulsory) why the government doesn't ban alcohol?


• Should motorcycle helmets be banned as riders wearing helmets drive rashly and cause more accidents.


• Continuing the same logic (helmets = rash riders) car drivers should be banned from wearing seatbelts. On the contrary there should be spikes sticking out of steering wheels as this will ensure safe driving.


• We, surprisingly, did not discuss cricket.


• And all agreed to say that we never mentioned the plagiarism episode and what followed.

And we took a number of photographs of all of us (Amit note that I haven't described that photograph of you and Yazad ). Hopefully they will go up on somebody's blog soon. Will link as soon as they go up.

I ran into two of my colleagues from office as we were leaving Cafe Coffee Day which was lucky. We got Rahul to take a few group photographs of all us outside CCD . Thanks Rahul.

Interestingly there was this person who claimed to be a New York times reporter and who took watched the proceedings with some interest. Ravikiran suspects he was a CIA plant.

As they put it in my organization: Good fun it was.