Friday, February 24, 2012

At the reading at Bungalow 9 yesterday....

Bandra, Bungalow 9, 4.30 pm. Have you been to Bungalow 9 ever? It is this lovely old villa, with teak wood beams and high ceilings and old art deco tiling, not to mention wooden stairs and banisters. My reading was on the upper level, a lovely cordoned off space.
The event was scheduled to be just a small gathering of people I would invite, and I invited Tisca Chopra, too. A confession here, I have never met or spoken with Tisca before yesterday, she is a twitter friend. One of the blessings of my life has been to meet wonderful people on twitter. She very kindly offered to read for me, and of course I accepted. It was an honour. She would read, my dear friend Parul Sharma, the author of Bringing Up Vasu and By The Watercooler would be in conversation with me and we would have chai nashta and disperse. So was the plan. Of course, I am a babe in the woods with NO CLUE.
As we waited, a slew of folks I was sure I had not invited, entered with huge backpacks and stands and such like and made themselves comfortable on the front sofas. I still had no clue at all. I smiled graciously, thinking, how wonderful, such a diverse motley bunch of folks are interested in what has been dubbed chicklit.

Tisca entered the premises and the penny dropped. The Cameras. The Cameras. Having never ever ever witnessed this (despite, I am ashamed to say, having lived in Bombay all my life), it was a revelation and I am never going to look at page three photographs ever again without doffing my hat to all those who do this on a regular everyday basis. This is bleddy tough. Pose. Pose. Pose. Look here, look here, smile.

Tisca read, from the "In which much gaping at a Bollywood superstar happens..." chapter. Parul asked me some interesting questions which were a welcome change from the run of the mill. And here are some pics from the event. 









 It was such a lovely evening, thank you Tisca, Parul for hand holding me through it. And Shunali, Parthip, Chinmay, Anupam, Shubhashish, Ashwin, Rebecca, Ranjit, Naghma, Sharmila and all those who took time out to be there.



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