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Delhi Bloggers blaze a trend

Twilight Fairy — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:35:27 +0000

This article of mine got published in HT. I am posting it here as well.. That piece also carried Rajesh Lalwani’s post on microblogging.

Internet and blogging have both come a long way. In the days of yore, we used to have Web pages on Angelfire or Geocities. There was a trend of putting freely available javascript code on the “homepages” to add the bells and whistles. An occasional addition to the “guest count” was a luxury. Interaction with the “guests” was out of the question.
Cut to now. The homepage has been replaced by the blog. Unlike traditional writing, blogging is not just meant for reading or consuming, it also initiates interaction and creates conversation. Bloggers build upon the thoughts and ideas of other bloggers and they all engage in the conversation. The blog has gone from being just an ‘online diary’ to a tool of professional and personal growth. If you are a blogger, anything, including but not limited to, book deals, job offers, celeb status, help in remote corners of the planet, TV interviews, regular income and career changes can come your way. But blogging is not only about reclusive online expression or anonymity. With online interaction comes the need to meaningfully interact offline as well, which in turn enriches online interaction. Blog communities and meetings address that need – and do much more. Not only are such communities, a great way to network socially and professionally, they also introduce bloggers to like-minded people who share the same tastes and a diverse variety of interesting opinions. A bloggers meeting fits the bill for social networking and may also align itself to activities in line with a group’s interests. Meeting offline is now the most natural thing to do once you have interacted online. That could get you a venture partner, a job offer, new contacts – or love!

Delhi’s bloggers happen to have a strong community. The group called the Delhi Bloggers Bloc (www.delhibloggersbloc.com) also happens to be possibly the oldest such community in India. It provides bloggers a common platform to interact online as well as offline apart from giving them a chance to share and promote their blogs. Frequent activities like photography/heritage walks, fun gatherings in pubs/cafes and serious meetings with agendas and outreach exercises, make sure that there is something in it for everyone. In fact so inspired was Sanjukta Basu, a veteran member of DBB, that she initiated another community on the same lines when she shifted to Bangalore. The Delhi bloggers community (DBB) was formed after some bloggers met at their first ever Delhi Blogger’s Meet on 13th January, 2004. The members recently celebrated the group’s 4th anniversary as well with a successful meeting. The group aspires to seek new and worthwhile ways to interact, learn, share, discuss and evolve both online and offline. The best part of this group is having so many people from diverse backgrounds, who one may not come across in the “normal” social circles one has. The group consists of an eclectic mix of people ranging from 14 to about 50 years of age with IT professionals, architects, chartered accountants, lawyers, doctors, journalists, social activists, housewives, army officers, media professionals, students, photographers, professional bloggers and others as members.

To be a member of the group, you can be a blogger who is or has been in Delhi or you can be a blog reader or someone who is keen on blogging and needs assistance in starting one. There is no age limit for joining. However if you are still studying, make sure your parents do not have a problem in your indulging in online activities. The group has had 23 officially chronicled meetings, a couple of unofficial meets, lots of history walks, sharing of photography tips, book reading sessions—and even kite flying days! The group, while being in the process of educatinonal exercises on blogging, has undertaken initiatives with voluntary groups and schools to help them harness the power of blogging. With so many forms of online interactions available, the group has its presence on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut as well.

To encourage professional networking amongst the DBB members, the group has a presence in business networking sites like LinkedIn. It also has a presence on flickr.com, the photo sharing site where they can share pictures from their blogger meetings as well as individual pictures.

There is a strong presence of photographers and photo bloggers in the group. With the advent of new media, the group has already had Delhi’s first Twitter meetup, for those who do mini-diaries on the go through Twitter.com It exists on Twitter as delhitweetup. The nerve centre of its interaction is however, a mailing list on Yahoogroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/delhibloggers/). All that is not easy for those who have other things to do. Many active members have taken time off their workaday lives to make a community and sub-culture out of blogging.

(The author is a software professional, photographer and founder of Delhi Bloggers Bloc.)

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DBM XXII – the first ever Delhi tweetup

Twilight Fairy — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:59:07 +0000

Time for the next meet – DBM XXII – which is also the first ever Delhi tweetup.

Before we go ahead – let see what this confusing jargon is (for those who are unaware of it).
A tweetup is a “twitter meetup”. Twitter is a tool used for microblogging. Microblogging is blogging micro updates.

That was twitter in short. One can update these microblogging updates through IM, sms or web. There are also several desktop clients to do the same. Through twitter one can choose to “follow” people and get to read their twitter updates. Similarly ppl who “follow” you would get to read your updates. Twitter is quick and easy, very good for bloggers who dont have much time to update their blogs .

Some of us are on twitter already. Some ppl like Hillary and Obama are also there . It doesnt matter whether it is really them or their proxies but they are very regular there. Those who aren’t yet on twitter, but would like to be, can quickly join in. Once that is done, you can follow “delhitweetup” – the id created for delhi twitter meets. This id is currently following some of you already. So the twitter updates of Delhi twitter users would also be in one place.

Now for the real thing:

When : 16th March’08 (sunday)
What time : sometime in the evening – 4-ish.
What : get acquainted with each other. Demystify twitter for those who dont know it yet.
Where : you decide .. This would depend on the number of ppl willing to attend the same.
Please give your ayes and nayes here (or you could tweet them keeping @delhitweetup in your confirmation tweet).

Those who wish to follow me on twitter, my id is twilightfairy.

Happy tweeting!

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सुस्वागतम

Twilight Fairy — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:31:58 +0000

Welcome to my new abode online. All my material from the old blog is here as well. Some minor tweaking etc. would continue happening here for sometime. If you find anything amiss please let me know. In the meanwhile, taking a brief look at what all I plan to write about :

1. Hair today, gone tomorrow – hair raising tails.. long pending since eternity.
2. Photography of course. How can I not.
3. Pending tags and pending guest posts. Sorry Sakshi, the tag would be up soon. Amit, the guest post would follow soon.
4. Couple of movie reviews and photo essays.
5. My friends through the blog world.
6. Long defunct Finn times – I would surely try to revive it with travelogues and at least pictures.
7. A guest post on my new blog by my dear friend Aashish where.. err.. he talks about some rather controversial stuff about me, but for once I would let him.
8. And last but not the least – an interview I gave to NDTV’s Delhi channel.

For the real rose water spray and the real tinkling glasses of wine, one shall have to visit me in the real world in apna Gurgaon.

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The mystery

Twilight Fairy — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:20:49 +0000

The mystery of where I am, unfolds dramatically. I am very much here. This has been the longest ever gap in my posts … and an unplanned one at that. Lots has been happening even in blogging terms, but the action has been on flickr since quite some time now. I am a self confessed flickr addict. Here is a glimpse from 20 of my pictures that made it to flickr explore at some time. Flickr explore is a way devised by good old flickr ppl to showcase 500 of the best pictures in a day. The algorithm to do that is a bit skewed up though, but it’s fun anyway.

The individual links of the pictures are here as well. 1. Rubies are red, 2. Reflections, 3. Mooning over the sun, 4. Where’s the party, tonight?, 5. Hold on, 6. Bala Quila, 7. The Ceiling, 8. Don’t let the sun go down on me,

9. The first step, 10. Venus approaching the moon at twilight, 11. Safdarjung tomb, 12. Clouding over, 13. Sway with the sunset, 14. Tootsie!, 15. Flames, 16. The Delhi bloggers meet – XI,

17. Heavens throwing light, 18. Symmetry in the petals, 19. More lighting, 20. And then God said, let there be light.

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Apart from this there have been umpteen blog meets with Delhi bloggers happening. Lots of collaboration being done for lots of things. Sigh, so much to do, such little time. Thanks to all those who have been regularly visiting and reading through the archives. Yes, there’s a whole lot out there to keep you busy for quite some time . And here’s another first – anyone who wants to write directly can write to me at twilightfairy at gmail dot com. I am quite curious to know who has been reading this bloggie regularly from HSBC, Singapore

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Shedding light

Twilight Fairy — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:52:16 +0000

When one has too many things to write about, one lands up in the kind of situ I am in. Not a writer’s block. Not a lack of time (I have written earlier even with scarcity of time). A mental state where ideas are aplenty but putting them down seems too arduous a task. Especially because of the mental backlog that has already accumulated. Going by past experience, it is best to post some and best to purge some. It has been a whole year today to the day I got back from Finland. I always intended to update Finntimes with travelogues about Paris, Switzerland, Copenhagen, the Arctic circle and best of all – the rest of my experiences in Finland which are definitely worth sharing. I still intend to do it, even though there’s been a substantial time gap. A chronicle is a chronicle is a chronicle. It gives one immense pleasure when read at a later date.

For starters, to break the discontinuity, I’ll finally oblige Atul Sabnis for he had tagged me, more than a month back. His tag says, “It has to be about your blogging experience, link us to what you believe are some of your best posts – tell us (at least now) why they are important to you – what you like about them. Keep it as free form as a possible – tell us a story. Tell us what blogging has meant to you, notwithstanding the opinion of the media (or anyone else).”

So here we go. Straight from the heart. I started blogging 3.5 years back mainly because it was a great way to share one’s creative writing endeavours. It’s a different thing, that today most bloggers would not even know what creative writing means. Though I had always maintained a physical personal diary for most of my formative years, I knew that the internet is definitely not a place for it, but creative writing and constructive feedback – yes. Blogging has been a very interesting journey so far. I never thought I would actually end up not only meeting a lot of people through this medium but also befriending some of them much more than friends met through the real world. I now know a lot of people outside what was my usual social circle – either engineers/ IT people or people from Army background. I have had the chance of seeing how blogging has evolved from a word which had to be spelt out and explained to everyone when I started, to the common word which has almost become a fashion statement now. Blogging has shown its power in terms of a lot of episodes which have rocked the blogworld or which have made the power of blogging have almost as much as an impact as main stream media. Being a part of the blogathon for the blank noise project was a big eye opener for many. The formation of a delhi bloggers group and continuous delhi blogger meets since 2.5 years ago has been a great outcome of this journey too. We have had fun meets and some serious meets like when BBC people have wanted to tap the capital for a feel of the blogger’s pulse here. We have had photography meets and book readings too. There are talks on to get into more serious business like spreading the word of blogging to those who dont know of it yet.

Personally, I have gone from the usual beginner’s point where every comment, every hit on my page seemed like an achievement TO not caring about it all anymore. I have seen ppl come to and go from the blogworld as often as the next bus, and I would be glad to say that so far so good – I am here to stay. I have consciously tried to never let blogging become an obsession. Priority has been over being rooted to the real world, having a life where blogging is not the only thing. It is yet another interesting hobby but not the only one. When I started I had grand plans – a personal (opinionated) blog, a travelogue, a blog only for music (had a beautiful instrumental piece on my main blog for a long time), a blog which would actually have audio/video (at that time podcasting was not even a concept), a blog for pictures (again things like flickr were not even a concept), an everchanging interesting template etc. But obviously doing so many things would need me to be only blogging fulltime. And consciously I had decided that I would never eat, drink, sleep – blogging. So all those ideas phased out in the germination stage. Having a readership, a faithful one at that, definitely gives a high. But then if one is that good, having one would not be an issue ever, whether in the blogworld or the real writers world. I tend to be very low on blog hopping. I barely visit some selected blogs of ppl who have now become my pals in the blogworld. Or people who come and comment here . Blogging has been of a lot of help to me in the real world too. Though I have not been one of those to find love here (and haven’t even got my first cheque from google adsense), I have landed myself a place to stay in, during my stint in Finland when there was absolutely no other option left but to shift out of company paid accomodation. [Thanks Ankur]. I have also had the pleasure of having the option to show this ENT specialist whenever I have a problem . [Thanks JW]. I have had a blogger’s kids coming up to me and saying “Oh! you are Twilight Fairy!!!!” :p. Never knew it was a family thing to visit certain blogs. :p.

In terms of selecting some of the best posts, that’s a toughie! Every time I go through archives, I go through yet another journey down memory lane. Reading a lot of posts, makes me feel astounded that *I* could have ever written those, they seem impeccable. Reading some of them also makes me wonder what I was thinking while writing them and how someone could have even appreciated them! When I do write, I try to make every piece worth the labour of reading it. A lot of thought goes into it. At times some research too. So I am not playing favourites here or let’s say I can’t afford to go through the “parental” task of choosing ones favourite child! The archives are all here. I have never deleted a single post till date. Never bothered to count how many they are, but am sure it can keep one occupied for days if one would like to bury one’s nose into this attic. Don’t we all just love going through those books with dogeared pages and dusty smells. :p. Here’s to many more such endeavours.

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DBM XII

Twilight Fairy — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:20:06 +0000

The Delhi blogger’s meet (XIIth) concluded on 29th July’06 in Cafe turtle, Khan market. Some highlights :

1. Cafe turtle is a cosy place (read it’s good for twosomes or even threesomes but not 22somes).
2. I had made reservations for 20 ppl which was double the number I had expected to turn up and the eventual number overshot even that. As they say, the merrier it was.
3. After making the reservations I was informed that the cafe closes at half day (read 7:30 pm) but nothing could be done at that point of time. “Shaadi cards already distributed” kind of situation. Though we have had the experience of changing the “shaadi venue” just before the “pheras” earlier too.
4. The organiser who got us to hold DBM XII got stuck up in a crisis at his workplace. Eventually he never turned up. Do you ever remember being in school and a certain teacher not turning up for class? How noisy was the place? How was the organised chaos with no agenda on hand? I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that we resembled a bunch of school kids creating ruckus. We even had backbenchers!
5. Some old timers came after a long long time. It was like the DBM’s of yore all over again.
6. There were bloggers, former journalists, future journalists and even theatre artists. Thankfully no sting operations.
7. The ppl at Cafe turtle surely got boggled when I made reservations. I spelled out “Delhi bloggers meet” for them because they just couldn’t understand the words I was uttering. Eventually I got a call from them confirming the “Daily bogglers meet”.
8. During the round of introductions, where everyone was supposed to start with “I am xxx and I blog at yyy”, the restless mind-boggled waiter silently shimmied on to the terrace like Jeeves and introduced himself in a jiffy – “I am Jason and I am here to take your order”. Do I need to add, he was the most sought after member of the evening. Oh and Nikhil ordered himself yet another fan, but this time it was the sorts that creates a current of air.
9. We had our own share of celebs in this meet. “NDTV called me”"CNN IBN asked me to express my views” were very common phrases uttered quite frequently. We will soon have our own P3 coverage too. :p. Unfortunately, this time our cameraman was busy taking footage of the food instead.
10. The back benchers were having a mini blog meet of their own. Some updates anyone? .
11. Masala chais, coffees, cakes and pastas. These were a few of the favourite things that the bloggers ordered. Who says you need booze to make you feel like you are having fun?
12. I spotted “Lazy lunch” and “lazy pasta” in the menu while Lazylump spotted “Fairy cake” in the menu!
13. I finally got to meet toinks after 3 years of virtual interaction! The grand mommie of rediffblogs is onto blogspot now.
14. At 7:25pm a bill was duly waved under my nose. All and sundry paid for their own consumption and some more (read tax).
15. Those who were still interested in hanging around moved over to the Yellow brick road .
16. A good turnout and a good funfilled DBM!

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Updated

Twilight Fairy — Tue, 30 May 2006 21:28:49 +0000

Updated Trivia after months. A spectacular night sky is on its way.

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DBM XI

Twilight Fairy — Sun, 07 May 2006 22:30:01 +0000

This meet was a much looked forward to affair because of the sudden interest of Julian, the producer of the BBC World Service Technology programme Digital Planet, Gareth who is the presenter of the same show and Bill, one of Britain’s leading authorities on blogging and net activism; in the affairs of us delhi bloggers, so as to assess the extent of net activity in India, how it differs from other places and to record a special edition of the programme just about this splendid country. To quote them, they were trying to find answers to questions like “Do you have a particular view on the use or effectiveness of your blogs? What do you think about the use of IT in India or its potential? The country is often seen as being in the grip of a technological boom, is this the case from your experience?”

The meet was held at India habitat centre, (a venue which I think is suitable for brainstorming and cultural stuff) on 6th May. Somehow a pub doesn’t seem like the right place for such things though I realise that for a lot of people, perhaps, their brain starts working when they have some alcohol numbing it :p. I reached the venue when I thought the discussion would have gained appropriate momentum. In other words, I wasn’t there from the beginning. I introduced myself to the trio and then met around with a couple of old timers while the discussion was ongoing in full swing with about 30 people. People had already given Bill, Julian and Gareth (though mostly Bill) an idea about the kind of net activities we have here like business networking (ryze), caferati, live blogging after the Tsunami, the IIPM episode etc. We went on to talk about the indexing in the desi blogworld, ongoing plagiarism in blogworld and otherwise, tech blogging (here Julian and Gareth were admittedly thoroughly bored of geeky stuff), news blogging, link blogging, revenue generation through blogs etc. I pitched in with some things about the blank noise project as a response to how blogging can make a difference. There were other means of course, for eg. live updates during Rita, Katriina, mumbai floods and blogging for social causes etc. There were also some discussions about the legal aspect of plagiarism in the blog world, how we (delhi bloggers) are trying to “make a difference” or trying to “bring about a change”. The scope of that “change” could mean different things to different peope – it could be personal growth, indulging in ones hobbies with fellow enthusiasts, honing ones writing skills, indulging in networking, rooting for social causes or getting instant help in case of emergencies. In that context that change or growth has been happening from day one. To a question put up by Bill, asking everyone if we, as a community, were growing and yet moderating ourselves, enough, to “make a difference” – I replied in the affirmative and added the above mentioned thought. I also added, that now “differences which are visible” are also beginning to happen. It’s interesting to note that not only is the community (slowly but surely evolving) but the whole aspect of blogging and how intertwined it is getting with our day to day life – is also evolving.

We eventually had Julian and Gareth record the radio show they wanted. They chose some intriguing observations they had come across in the evening. So they interviewed some people – a blogger who’s an IIT-ian and quit his job to take up blogging full time since he makes more revenue than he would in an MNC (that’s *so* unheard of), a blogger who’s organising an online reality show where a person travels on a modest budget and blogs about it as (s)he does, a blogger who’s part of a community blog – bribe Delhi which has been featured on NDTV as well and then from some aspect of how/when it all started and some stuff about Blank noise – yours truly was also chatted up with. It didn’t feel like an “interview”. Much after the recording got over, we were still in that mode, with Gareth asking me if I had ever imagined some years back that so many things would happen with this community or about blogging in general, how it has grown, changed etc. He also asked me how things were in other metros, whether people were as active there, if there were similar “communities” or “individual islands“.

They all wanted to explore Nehru place for some reason where I guess they got fascinated with an open market (mandi more like) for all kind of hardware. They also told us about their not so great experience in trying to interview some folks there. I emphasised on the fact that they should surely write a travelogue about India (not just because of the British background but also the interesting experiences) because people who aren’t from that place would always notice things that the insiders would probably feel normal about. The 3 most outstanding things in this category being, the way people drive around, the cows minding their own bovine business on roads and the heat (not that we can’t notice the heat. It is anything but ignored.)

By this time, most people had left, some had retired to Eatopia after which they proceded to All American Diner and then Turquoise cottage. I tried to individually meet the remaining members, which is something that happens in every meet but barely happened in this one. Some of us exchanged business cards with the trio. I explained why I wasn’t joining them in the pub, since I had a party to attend in Gurgaon. I described Gurgaon and Gareth showed signs of recognition because they had been exploring the malls the day before. Overall a very very interesting experience and I surely look forward to more such happenings.

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Of the bloggers, for the bloggers, by a blogger

Twilight Fairy — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:10:20 +0000

Bhumika : Finally, this post is up. Long, long ago, (on Blog day to be precise) I had told Gabby about a post I had up my sleeve. More than Gabs, Smiley has been waiting for it. So smiley, finally the answer to your regular question since then, to every single post of mine is, “Yes, this is the post I meant”. Here goes.

Bloggers are so many,
real meetings so few,

If you were in my situation,
what would you do?

Haven’t met any, in this part of the world,
so here’s my way of having a teté-a-teté.

Hope you can also identify with,
what my wild imagination can create!

Absolutely Leela! Her surname isn’t Arora, else, this would have been a perfect match! I am guessing “Lilla” means little, in Swedish, since “Pikku” means little in Finnish.

Alpha – the Sridevi of blogosphere .

“Herne” means peas in Finnish.. “Herneet” is also another version of the same. Now I know where the word “mattar gashti” came from . Harneet is the only blogger out of all these, that I have met in person also.

Gratisgab, is one blogger, who I think instantly reacts to what I deem reactionworthy in my posts. Most of the times, ppl react to everything else, leaving out what I think is worth observing.

Have never interacted with Serena, not even in blogosphere. But have seen her around in the same area that I frequent. Serena is the name of a place here. It also has a waterworld kind of resort.

Last but not the least, that’s me! Of course I should have been there to meet all of them. .

I thought I would definitely bump into Patrix too, in form of a St. Patrix or something. Though I didn’t, I certainly came across what I thought was quite a resemblance of Patrix. Click “Photo of Patrick” in this.

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One tight slap

Twilight Fairy — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 07:11:26 +0000

I really like this style of movie editing, usually found in typical Indian movies and serials. As of now, I can visualise a sorry looking IIPM wearing the ‘One tight slap’ expression that says it all – it should have never tried to meddle with someone’s freedom of expression with the atrocious measures they employed. This is to spread awareness about a certain post written by a blogger – Gaurav Sabnis – which talked about the credibility of the huge claims made by IIPM (the villain) and borrowed heavily from another blogger – Rashmi’s – article on her publication Jam-mag, which uncovered several of the facts.

One would wonder what is wrong with that, it is typical blogspeak. But IIPM chose to sue Gaurav (victim 1) in true movie style, for 125 crores on account of defamation. Not only that, they also sued another blogger Varna (Victim 2) who supported Gaurav, for 175 crores. Apart from this, IIPM (the real Prem Chopra type villain using cheap tactics) tried to pressurise Gaurav’s employer, IBM, into making Gaurav retract his statements made against IIPM by threatening to burn IBM’s laptops right outside their office. Well, I personally think they should have let them carry out the threat and seen the police etc. getting involved. That would have been some incident covered by mainstream media and IBM would have got some good publicity anyway which was being threatened in the first place. Gaurav resigned from his job in order to avoid pressures of any kinds and to stand by his sachha word. This was the second incident of its kind where an Indian blogger is being served legal notices because of what he/she has published on his/her blog. The main point of the matter is what rights do bloggers have. Cyberlaws aren’t in place for this kind of a thing especially blogging, which is a relatively new concept. The main stream media is finally sitting up and taking notice of this incident and HT, NDTV, Daily Pioneer, Mumbai mirror have already printed news about the same. The whole episode is being tracked by DesiPundit and can be read here.

There has been a bhuchaal not only on the planet but in blogosphere as well. Bloggers are taking a stand this time and aren’t giving up without a fight. It’s time to show the power of blogging to those who don’t realise it yet. For all those who support the cause for rights of bloggers, can spread the word. Hopefully, we may soon see that “One tight slap” shot and on national television at that.

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Updated

Twilight Fairy — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 07:45:26 +0000

This and this. More updates later. I have a 3 day weekend… whee!

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Blogger Quiz

Twilight Fairy — Tue, 03 May 2005 07:55:18 +0000

For the DBM this time, Ajay and I prepared a blogger quiz. Here it is in case you want to find out how well you know “delhi bloggers”. Of course some of you might not have any clue about the answers because the questions were made on the state that the blog was in a few days before the DBM i.e. some questions pertain to the posts and hence are temporal. Some other questions pertain to general characteristics of blogs or may be the bloggers themselves. The main idea was to accumulate some little bit of trivia about the people who were attending the DBM so that we get down to breaking the ice and of course some questions about other non-delhi bloggers were also thrown in for “general knowledge”.

The answers are also under the questions themselves. I have written them in white so that you can see them by selecting the area.

1. Whose blog title is technically incorrect i.e the alias is not valid anymore because of change in status?
Answer – Deepan (Mind of an unmarried man)

2. Name one blogger couple who have a combined blog. Hint [can be outside DBM]
Answer – Sid/Tan – chronicled life

3. Which blogger has dates in Hindi on the blog?
Answer – Amit Ken

4. Which blogs name means “plucked flower” in Native American?
Answer – Mansi (Author – Priya)

5. Name 1 blogger who has a fotolog and a blog.
Answer – Simple Simon, Twilight Fairy, Netahoy, Chris sordid

6. Name 1 blogger who studies at MDI Gurgaon.
Answer – Ajay, Saurabh garg

7. Whose blog has 4 back to back posts on Holi itself?
Answer – Mohit Maheshwari

8. Who has recently woken up after 10 months hibernation in blogland?
Answer – Diya (could be many but it was Diya AFA attending members of DBM are concerned)

9. Which blogger has attended a blogger meet in another city as well and where?
Answer – Newton’s apple : Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore;
Adi : Hyderabad (That’s another thing Adi mahashya never turned up for DBM so technically the answer is incorrect)

10. Whose blog has a photo of the author in wedding gear?
Answer – Ajay (Married Single)

11. Who is the author of a cricket website and whose blog – India Uncut won the Best New IndiBlog 04?
Answer – Amit Varma.

12. Whose blog is so ‘comfortably numb’ that it’s dead since a year?
Answer – Piyush gupta (Phantasmic)

13. Whose blog has a space travel feel or at least it was intended to look like that?
Answer – Twilight Fairy .. :p..ahem

14. Name a food blog.
Answer – tancancook, madman’s shiok

15. Which former journalist writes “just a little something”, and has won at the Indiblog awards?
Answer – Anita Bora

16. Which blogger has been responsible for selecting the “sizzling blogs” on rediffblogs?
Answer – Toinks (Toinkdom1)

17. Which blogger’s fav song has to be: “Objects in the rear view mirror, may appear closer than they are”?
Answer – Prashant (post specific question)

18. Which blogger’s job involves inserting bugs into perfectly normal code?
Answer – Ankur (bugman).

19. Name one blogger whose blogging alias is also another valid Indian name?
Answer – Ajay (married single), Adi (sporadic thoughts)

All old timers were barred from answering the obvious questions. The new DBM bloggers who earn mention for answering 2 questions (each) correctly are Diya and Sruthijith.

PS. With so much of HTML for coloring text, “html-challenged me” can barely get myself to link all the ppl mentioned here, so please make do.

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DBM VI

Twilight Fairy — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 05:57:43 +0000

Come one, come all for YADBM (That’s Yet Another DBM). Please confirm your attendance at the site itself.

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My share?

Twilight Fairy — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 08:00:46 +0000

Sometime back I went through my site statistics and discovered yet another time that someone had searched for “twilight fairy” or “twilight fairy blog” or “twilght_fairy” (old blog URL) and landed on my blog. Since I hadn’t really seen what results are shown when one searches for “twilight fairy blog”, I went to the link too. The same usual stuff came up – blogs linking me, sites where I had left comments etc and some other random links with “twilight” in them. But there was one new link that was referring to my blog and this had never popped up before. Out of curiosity I went there and realised that it was my blogs details on a site which I had never visited so far – blogshares.com. I didn’t know what it was all about and why my site was there, but I guess it was because of web spiders that I was indexed there. This site had a lot of statistical stuff like incoming links (blogs which link to me etc), my blogshare (a share price for my blogs’ shares!), graphs showing how the number of incoming links trend has been and the share price trend (surprisingly it’s at an all time high right now!) and lots of other abbreviations & jargon which looked very close to stock market jargon. I guessed that this was just a timepass stockmarket kind of place, where ppl traded and hence the name – blogshares.

I am generally averse to stock markets and all stuff to do with finance, shares, trading etc. It intimidates me so much that I just don’t have the inclination to even try and understand how it works even though I hold several stock options of my current employer. So I tried glancing through the FAQ to see what blogshares is all about and then gave up by default, until I saw that there was a section on my page listing “recent buys/sells” where some strangers with even stranger names had bought and even sold my “blog shares”! What the heck! It seemed at the first look that these guys were making money out of *my* blog or its “quality” in terms of incoming links which in turn decides a share price! All is fine if it’s a silly game, but if it had anything to do with REAL money then I was sure to have felt pretty much conned.

I decided to “glance” one more time through the FAQ as long as I found it bearable. I didnt. Gave it up one more time but I did see a “premium member” option on the page and wondered if premium members got to trade with REAL stuff. There were a lot of bloggers whose blogshare pages were mentioned on my page itself. In fact most of the bloggers I have read are listed on this site. Simply because so many of them are there already, I have safely and (I think) correctly concluded that this is a silly share market game with no money involved. But I am still wondering why anyone would be so vela to spend their time trading with blogs! Can anyone explain what this is all about?

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DBM – 5

Twilight Fairy — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:32:48 +0000

Here we are with yet another meet at yet another venue with yet another “theme”. All bloggers from Delhi who are interested in meeting fellow bloggers from Delhi, please make your presence felt @

Flame’s Bistro, M-Block Market, GK II
on October 21st, 2004, 5 pm “onwards”

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Announcing…

Twilight Fairy — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 12:39:06 +0000

… another blog of mine that I, after a lot of interesting blog plans, finally succeeded in creating . Need to brush up the looks a little but specifically this new blog is meant for interesting trivia that I come across. That may include total timepass stuff too. So visitors, may I please request you to get your hands together and no, don’t clap, just click.

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Been There Done That

Twilight Fairy — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 08:02:07 +0000

Ha! Now I can brag on having been there, done that!! Those who don’t know what I am talking about, can check this link, where TOI mentions something about the DBM.

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DBM III – Some Highlights

Twilight Fairy — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 08:05:44 +0000

1. Nick dude came expecting to see simply sultry simone ma’m , instead he had to make do with Simple Simon.
2. The newbies didn’t know Tieless Ranjan simply because he has ceased to exist on the mailing list circuit since the time the tieless question was asked. But Ranjan needs to be thankful for one thing. The attention from the previous question has now shifted to this one, the previous question being -’Have you found your soulmate at the DBM?’. Apparently that’s the reason ‘Tieless Mateless Ranjan’ makes it to the DBM everytime. Last seen he was chatting up Jennifer (or was that Lauren) merrily.
3. Khotta was looking like a shareef baccha in his new hair cut with his pony tail gone from his head and instead grown where it should be (where the sun ain’t no shine). But all the sharaafat disappeared the moment khotta neighed out his answers to the intellectual quiz everyone was asked to participate in.
4. This time instead of one official photographer, we had three! All of them floggers in fact. Amit’s camera was adopted by Priya as soon as he strided in with a digicam, leaving Simon’s (simply sultry) SLR camera in a lurch. Sanzen was busy clicking funny snaps of unsuspecting people . Some snaps.
5. Ajay vowed that from now on, he wont change his name/blog alias as frequently as he changes the latest post on his blog. In fact it’s supposed to remain constant now. Nothing in this world is as constant as change.
6. Deepan was still perfecting his aim of nosediving in his drink (something he got interested in, in DBM I). He was also heard booming over the music with threats of taking the pants off.. (I think he meant someone else’s not his)
7. Simply simone.. err Simple Simon was seen having a private blog meet of his own (most of the time), in a dark and dingy corner. It’s a pity he didn’t let us interact with the other members of this blogmeet – his cellphone and his wallet.
8. ‘Main madira nahi peeti jee’ – uttered by Sridevi in Chaalbaaz. Sandhya and yours truly, lady with music on her blog, were trying to follow this dictum and were perhaps the only ones with mocktails.
9. Sakhi was enjoying her last DBM as a delhi blogger. She would soon be a part of that evergrowing club which would be ‘delhi bloggers in mumbai’.
10. Ruchika and CutelilTisha were quite quiet. Perhaps the first-time-meeting-so-many-unknown-bloggers kind of feeling had left them like this. Ruchika bloomed into life the moment Kams stepped in. She probably didn’t notice Khotta desperately trying to attract Kams’s attention. No, not even when Khotta specially seated Ruchika in a homeward auto in order to get — rid of her and ample time with Kams. (kabaab se haddi bahar hee nikaal dee! )
11. MO2 needed a dose of N2O (laughing gas for all you non-science peepul). He had maintained quite a serious face earlier, but that got better with time.
12. Gump was somehow the ‘chosen one’ everytime someone had to pretend as if they are killing/slaughtering/murdering someone. This was during Dumb Charades.
13. Tanny was apprehensive about attending the blog meet but am sure he’s glad he came.

And with that we come to the end of the highlights for DBM III. For another update, Intezaar kijiye DBM IV tak.

PS. sorry for missing out 1-2 ppl, but that’s simply because I didnt interact with ya, mebbe next time!

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The Delhi Blog Mob

Twilight Fairy — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:03:18 +0000

New Delhi, 13 Jan

Delhi experienced its first Blog Mob today at TGIF, Vasant Vihar at around and after 4pm. This mob, which went on the lines of the latest fad – flash mobs, had several ppl of the blogging community from Delhi meeting up at a designated place and time, but unlike flash mobs, this one didn’t dissipate as fast (this mob kept waiting to be kicked out). It was organised by a series of people having a fetish for the letter ‘S’, namely Sandhya, Simple Simon, Sw Ne, and also Sakhi. Bloggers started trickling in at the decided time and took full advantage of the Happy Hours. When our correspondent reached the venue, she was greeted by a lively mob of around 15, who all wanted to meet the person with ‘music on her blog’. There were a few ppl coochie cooing in a corner and taking advantage of the smoke screen enveloping around them (a creation of their own incessant smoking) to do unimaginable things. Sw Ne was seen getting bubbly as she took in a lot of the same, it explained her amorous advances towards Khotta. Beauty certainly lies in the eyes of the be(er)holder, Kyonki Khotta certainly is no Depp and he was painfully reminded the same by all.

Lone Cypress was not so lonely since she had a date for the eve (wonder how she landed up with a China Man to get rid of her lonelyness, unless he has *something* of Leviathan proportions). May be Shubir coined in a phrase like ‘Old Chinese Saying – Get in the company of a man with *something* of Leviathan proportions and you shall not want anything else in life’ to impress her.

Jill of all trades aka Newton’s apple seemed to be the youngest blogger around but was found to be not so. On being provoked somewhat, she vehemently claimed that she loved Delhi enough to spend an entire lifetime here. Senjam Raj sekhar was seen doing what he does best, improve his PR with the people around him. Soumya was seen quietly observing all around him and helping Lone Cypress and Shubir by creating enough smoke screens around them which gave competition to the next day’s fog that was to envelop Delhi.

Priya (yeah that’s her name, not Mansi, as she insists) was seen merrily sipping Bloody Mary from all the glasses which held her potion. The effect has been noticed in certain pictures that she took of the crowd. They have been censored to protect identities.

Ajay had to peer over the crowd since he was at a higher level than the rest, not intellectually but because of his height. Asterix the gaul, was seen downing a lot of potion (even oblix’s share). Arnav (he’s not anonymous any more) was seen chatting up all members of the fairer sex who were in his vicinity. He didn’t change his vicinity as often as Deepan who was observed giving a lot of competition to Sw Ne for her double meaning, suggestive comments aimed at Khotta (of course, they went over his head, since he was concentrating on his lips too much, hoping they would get lucky). Abhishek Saxena was heard humming all the songs that were dedicated to the bloggers.

Ranjan was seen to stride in quite late, and he seemed to be searching for someone. It was a general perception, that he’s searching for his soulmate and was expecting to find one at the blog mob. His face said it all when he DID spot someone familiar. He stared at Sanjem for around 5 minutes (boring a hole in his head with his stare) and then informed him that he’s Sanjem Raj Sekhar. They both looked at each other as if they would kill each other. According to records, they both were supposed to have met at a debate organised in guawhati.

Beautiful life was seen being shy and coy and she hurried out the earliest she could (maybe she had someone waiting with whom she’s not so shy). WonderBug was seen giggling with Priya, when the latter would start searching for her Bloody Mary and with Deepan who was observed to be nose diving in his drink. Jasprit was seen handling all the waiters as they got confused with the huge orders. Sanjay arrived quite late with a confused look, wondering whether he had landed at the right place, but after some time, his confused look was replaced by an interested one, which revealed that this sort of thing was new to him. Amit netahoy Agarwal was the last one to arrive, and was seen getting his dimpled profile clicked by the official photographers.

A couple of bloggers were found absconding and there were a lot of hushed murmurs in the crowd about their whereabouts. Somersault aka irony aka Oddity aka Fried green apple (whatever) was missing along with Heretic. Scout Finch was reportedly drowning in her work. Her boss was later found murdered in her office.

The organisers presented everyone with a CD that had been tediously compiled by them. The CD was played throughout the evening with one track dedicated to each blogger. A vote of thanks was given to the organisers by our correspondent.

But this leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Would Ranjan ever find his soulmate? Would Jill of all trades ever settle down in Delhi. Would Khotta’s lips ever get lucky? Would Lonely Cypress ever learn to cook chinese? Would Deepan perfect his aim of nosediving in his drinks? Yeh sab jaan-ne ke liye dekhte rahiye HUM (B)LOG!

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Some mundane facts abt my blog

Twilight Fairy — Wed, 10 Sep 2003 10:03:24 +0000

1. The person you can thank (or curse) for my plunge in the blogging world is Aashish. That’s a different thing, that I have visited his blog may be 4 times in my entire bloglife. Even he doesn’t know that he was indirectly the one who made me take the decision. I was toying with the idea of blogging since quite some time but never really took the plunge coz I thot I would not be able to manage it regularly with the kind of hectic schedules that office usually gives me. (wasn’t wrong about that one ) Now I knew somewhat about Aashish, since one of his collegemates (P) happens to be my cubicle mate. P would time and again tell me of the mails on their yahoo group that Aashish would usually post.. all gossipy stuff like ppl eloping and getting married and the like .. It seems he was the only regular ‘news reporter’ on their yahoo gp. I could perfectly identify with him coz I was more or less in the same situ..trying to keep a yahoo group alive by posting juicy gossip and of course also being the moderator. I was also given to understand that he’s in the IT industry, though I think in the management cadre. And one fine day P told me about Aashish’s venture into the blogging world.. so here I was…thinking that his interests seem to be very much like mine.. and may be I should also give blogging a try.

2. I started my blog as a private blog coz I was not too sure about what to write..I was sure that I didn’t want this to be a personal diary thing. It stayed that way for some days and then I posted something finally. I also made my blog public. But by that time, my blog was nowhere in the latest blogs entries so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t get any visitors/comments on the first post. It was something of a rather selfconscious first effort .

3. I thought of keeping a unique and original psuedonym for my blog. Suddenly ‘twilight’ bubbled up from somewhere in my head. I have always noticed that it’s much easier for people to open up or confess when it’s night or rather when it’s dark. Somehow the sense of anonymity that the night (or rather the darkness) lends to the atmosphere, makes people shed all their inhibitions and share their utmost personal thoughts. I have seen people, even strangers talking their hearts out in situs like these..I have myself experienced the same sense of comfort when it’s night. Ever noticed how one tends to always stay up late talking into the night even when one knows that one has important business to attend to in the morn? Well, somehow it’s just not the same in the daytime. Things are way too clear, precise and visible in daytime. In the night everything is kinda hidden in shadows..and well..there’s a comfortable sense of security. So ‘twilight’ indicated that it’s time to be chatty. I really don’t remember how I thought up of fairy. It was something to do with the magic that night brings with it or maybe it was something to do with weaving magic with words.

4. So much for my originality! One fine day (inspired by many fellow bloggers), I searched in google for my psuedonym. The fact that the number of results were *huge* did nothing to amuse me, because all that turned up in the name of my blog was some obscure comment that I had left on someone’s blog which was in turn cached by google. The rest of the links were about some easily procurable *toy*, commonly found in departmental stores! Twilight fairy was a collectable like Barbie!!

5. Till date I have communicated with 3 bloggers on mail. None of them on a regular basis.

6. No one in my family knows that I blog and I intend to keep it that way. But I have consciously tried to post rather impersonal things so that I don’t land up in trouble at some later date . AFA my friend circle goes, I must have told around only 15-20 people that I blog. Hardly 2-3 visit my page once in a blue moon. The traffic usually consists of netizens I don’t know anything about. The number of ppl I shared this with is quite less actually but I didn’t broadcast it to all my friends because I was sure I would be greeted by remarks like ‘You sure are vela’, ‘Oh, so that’s what keeps you busy’, ‘You sure have a lot of spare time’ and the like.

7. My stats counter shows me some very weird things. I have never set my timezone but it gives me varied results all the time! It has a timezone wise share of my visitors. Bewildered would be a small term..to describe what I was when I saw that most of my visitors seemed to be from the middle east.. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and even Pakistan. A substantial number was from India but it was miniscule compared to the middle east visitors! I wonder why ppl *there* would be reading my blog more than Indians! Though it also showed some stats of US (both east coast and west coast, where typically Indians work). In between for some days the stats showed that there were *hardly* any Indian visitors. I think most visitors ignore their timezone settings. That could be the only thing that explains the goof up. Here’s a pic of the stats.

For current stats, you can click here.

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