Well, there I was… outside Café Coffee Day …. 15 minutes LATE! For something that I had planned out!! Finally, we were all meeting up! It’s been sometime now, that we were all communicating via the internet... which by the way... somehow seems really freaky to me with all the Internet frauds going on!
But still some how, I had been really looking up to meeting everyone… all day, or ever since this had been planed!
So there I was finally, outside Café Coffee Day, to meet my new friends… who were strangers to me till this minute. So then I finally walked inside…looking around to find some familiar faces.
Well, we had all met over this community at Orkut, that I had created “Marathi In Ahmedabad”. We had all been chatting and scrapping for a while now, and had decided to meet on Friendship Day (6th August 2006 at 4.30 pm). Not all of us had our pictures up on the internet. So basically it would be like strangers meeting up!
I thought about this as I entered inside, and looked around tables… where groups of people had gathered around everywhere… and I tried to look if I found any familiar faces! Gosh!! I couldn’t find a single one!! As I walked out again, I decided to call Annu.
Annu and I had met before a few times. She is a really sweet gal! And we had turned out to be really good friends from the few times we met. And the one thing we have in common is that we are both really talkative. Well, most girls are, like she says!
This particular day, Annu was also late. I called her to find out where she was, and wondering why no one had turned up! It seemed so frustrating that after all this planning no one had actually turned up!! Annu said that, I should look again and that she was stuck in traffic and would be coming in something like 15-20mins and I just decided to wait outside. Then I got to thinking why nobody had turned up, or if someone had turned up and left seeing no one had come. I had chatted with Vaibhav earlier today, and he said that he would definitely come. Did he come and go away seeing nobody had come? Did someone else come, and go away thinking the same thing that I am thinking now? Did everyone come meet up and leave? Or maybe they are all sitting inside? Should we call the whole thing off? Or maybe take a second look inside? As these thoughts caused chaos within me Annu finally appeared! I wished her, “Happy Friendship Day” with a quick hug, as we decided to go inside.
As we entered inside, the music enveloped us and once again unconsciously we looked around in hope of seeing some one familiar. I was sure, that some one might recognize Annu. Between the two of us, she was the brave one to put up her pictures on the internet. Well, as I looked around, this time I saw someone wave at us!! I was not very sure; he waved at us or someone else. I turned back to Annu, as her cell phone suddenly went ringing… I decided to risk looking back in the same direction again, as I saw, a somewhat familiar face. As we walked closer I was sure it was Vaibhav. Ahh, so people hadn’t ditched on us! I was so happy to know that.
As we settled down, we got introduced again. This time in person. There was Mauli, the pretty architect but somehow I could easily make out, it was her from the way she dressed! That’s how it is with artistic people I guess. Then there were our two doctors, Varun and Kunal who looked really sincere and studious types. Well, aren’t all doctors like that??!! And of course, there was Vaibhav, the Developer who has ‘Pretty Zinta’s dimples’! Well, it would be unfair if I didn’t mention anything about Annu and me. So, Annu, she is studying, and me, I am a Software Engineer.
So, we got down getting to know each other, laughing and chatting away, voices blending in with the loud music being played in the background. The doctors got into telling us about some research stuff, well it’s something too hi-fi for me to really grasp and even more difficult to reproduce it again in words, so let me just skip that. Then there was a discussion about softwares, as two of us belong to the same field. And of course the discussion rolled back to how we all met, “Orkut”, and internet and once again frauds on the internet, etc. We talked about how difficult it was, recognizing each other as only few of us had pictures up over the internet, etc. It was really interesting knowing most of us had even studied in the same school! Strange…isn’t it? Who know how many times, we could have actually crossed our paths, in school or someplace else, yet we didn’t know each other!! It was surprising how we all chatted away, forgetting all about time ticking away, like old friends. Someone seeing us would never have guessed we were all meeting up for the first time!! And then it was finally time to end this mesmerizing event! We decided to capture, our memories in form of photos. Thanks to mobiles with cameras these days! Well we clicked away few pictures and exchanged contact numbers. Well, let’s not forget it was Friendship Day, which would be so incomplete without Friendship Day Bands! And then, it was time to part.
“Lot can happen over a cup of Coffee”! Lot did!! I met few people who were strangers till yesterday, and now friends, whom I am looking forward to meeting soon again. I had a really nice evening, and got inspired to write after a really long time! Yeah... Lot can happen over a cup of coffee….
