Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

TOTCS (the one they call Stuckinkindergarten) has always been fascinated by the concept of bloggers meeting up in real life. DSS provided ample examples with people getting together across the globe, often meeting up more regularly in real life than online. From his fortress of solitude TOTCS watched as friendships formed, love blossomed, people got married, some feelings were hurt. In Dec 2006 TOTCS took the important first step from the virtual to real world after discovering that he had more in common with a fellow DSSer than just taste in music. What follows is a long-overdue, first-person account of various meets. A slice of life blog by a not so sharp knife.

Blogging for me has always been a chance to improvise, to exercise the right side of the brain. Being a very private person with a solitary nomadic existence, it becomes necessary for me to create a secret identity. Like superman I hope to be mild mannered geek by day and by night TOTCS (still a mild mannered geek - damn TV ruined my imagination). In fact I’m so secretive about my true identity that I blog wearing fake glasses with the attached plastic nose and moustache.

Over time the world gets divided into 2 distinct spheres. Friends and family are unaware of the blog and while interacting with DSSers via emails I instinctively sign off as TOTCS although several of them are nice enough to write under their real names. The thought of crossing over comes up everytime someone writes about a blogger meet. I’m curious to see how each blogger matches up to the mental image I have formed from their writings but several hurdles stand in the way. First - none of the DSSers are in Mumbai. Second- I’m not the most scintillating of conversationalists and past experiences of meeting people I’ve only known online have included entire evenings filled with awkward pauses between polite requests to pass the salt, right through dessert.

In Dec 2006 several events conspire to make conditions for a crossover favorable. Four of my favorite musicians are touring India and Bangalore is one of their stops. My cousin promises me front row seats if I come down. This is enough impetus to get off my butt and make arrangements for a trip. Round this time I discover that Capt Nemo and I share the same first name. So I figure if all else fails we could atleast talk about the pros and cons of our first name, since everyone else who I know with the same first name are either dead or wishing they were. So we exchange phone numbers. We plan to meet up at the concert and over the weekend he promises to fix-up a Bangalore DSS meet.

Dec 6 2006
I land in Bangalore. Since there are only 3 hrs to the concert my cousin recommends we hang around near the venue (St John’s Auditorium, Koramangala) rather than make a pit stop at his house, which is 2 kms away. This gives me a feel for traffic conditions. I call Capt Nemo hoping to catch up before the concert starts but he is 2 kms away. I ask him to call me when he reaches the venue. I have no idea what he looks like but from his writings I picture him as a leather jacket wearing biker (an Indian version of Brando in Wild one). Minutes before the show starts he comes in and I’m surprised at how accurate my mental image is (apart from the leather jacket biker bit I’m dead on). We exchange pleasantries and talk about DSS. Pradzie is winding up things in Bangalore and cant make it to the show so I miss the chance to meet him. Its time for the concert to begin so we head off to our seats. During the intermission we meet up to compare notes. After the show we meet up in the parking lot but I have to leave in a hurry so we say our goodbyes. Unfortunately I have to cut my Bangalore trip short so I miss the opportunity to meet the rest of the DSSers. I give him a CD with about 100 tunes of various artists (I find it easier to calculate a percentile score that way) to get a feel for his taste in music. I also promise to blog about the meet as soon as I get back home.

Aug 3 2007
Mumbai is under water. I skip work and wade through knee-deep water to the nearest multiplex to catch the opening show of “Simpsons The Movie”. The kid at the ticket counter tells me there will be no show. Not amused I snake my hands through the little opening in the glass and grab him by the neck with a “Why you little…“. The manager tries to calm me down by explaining that the prints haven’t arrived on account of the rain. He invites me to watch the latest Bollywood potboiler instead. I invite him to eat my shorts and now he grabs me by my neck. Just then the phone rings, interrupting our stand off. It’s Capt Nemo. He’s just flown in town and though he’s made it to his office uneventfully, none of the candidates he has come down to interview have shown up. Since the day has been a washout we decide to meet up the next day, weather and time permitting.

The next day Capt Nemo calls me. He is on his way to the airport and has a few hours before the flight. We decide to meet at the Orchid (a venue recommended to him by mighty Atracus). Over lunch we get a chance to discuss music. He scores a high percentile on my test CD so we have lots of common ground. Over the next few hours we trace our evolution as listeners back to the time before the internet and CDs and MP3s. Our paths are more or less identical with lots of credit going to AM & SW radio and those unsung heroes the purveyors of pirated PMT tapes. Capt Nemo is a lot more open minded and scholarly when it come to music and as a result his taste spans genres from world music to sufi music and ghazals in addition to rock, jazz and blues. I on the other hand have favored bands featuring a good guitarist.

Capt Nemo is a maverick and has led an extremely interesting life so we end up talking about economics, theatre, debating, movies - just some of the fields he has seriously dabbled in. Soon its time for his flight so I walk him to the airport terminal. Once again I promise to blog about the meet as soon as I get home.

[to be continued]