First: Beginning: The BlogLand Chronicles - 1
Previous: Republic Day: The BlogLand Chronicles - 3

Anil and I were discussing the different love songs King Kong could have sung had he only bothered to learn Hindi, when Prakash walked into BlogLand.

"Hey, Prakash!" I said. "How's the baby coming along?" Prakash's wife had given birth to their first child a couple of weeks before. Ever since then, that was the only thing he could talk about.

"Oh, don't even ask," he replied as he sat down at our table, holding his head in his hands.

"Why, what happened?" I asked, concerned. Until the last conversation, which was only a few days ago, talking about the baby was what made him happiest.

"She sleeps all day, and stays awake all night."

"Sounds like my kind of kid," I said.

But he ignored me and continued. "I've hardly slept the whole of last week! Half the night she's up and crying for no apparent reason. Then other times, she needs to be fed, or changed. We've decided to share the chores, and since Sarita does the feeding, I'm stuck with changing the diapers. Have you ever changed a baby's diapers?"

"No way!" said Anil. "And thank goodness for that!"

"Me neither," I said. "It's bad, is it?"

"Trust me," he replied, "you don't know what shit loads of something means, until you've seen the inside of a baby's nappy."

Both of us roared with laughter, and even Prakash grinned. "That was a good one, wasn't it?"

"Priceless!" said Anil, still laughing.

"Why doesn't she bottle up the milk so you can share both the chores?" I asked.

"Oh, you think I didn't try suggesting that? You see, changing diapers is one of the ways I compensate for not being able to share the pain of child birth."

"I can see that being married is a lot of fun," grinned Anil. "Shit loads of fun, to be precise!" And he started laughing again.

"So," I smiled, "the wife and kid are coming along fine, I take it?"

"Oh, wonderfully. If it hadn't been for the lack of sleep, I'd almost say this was the most fun I've ever had!"

"Can't be more fun than your honeymoon," Anil pointed out.

"True," said Prakash. "But that was a different sort of fun. And the joy of looking at that little bundle of flesh knowing she'll call you Daddy one day, is unbelievable. It's even worth changing diapers for that. Just wait till you have one of your own."

"I'm in no hurry!" Anil looked horrified.

"You're definitely a long way from even worrying about that, if you ask me," I teased. "By the way, how's your girlfriend?"

"Friend who's a girl. Not girlfriend. She's fine. We might watch a play next week. You've finally decided to stop bugging me about meeting her on the internet, have you?"

"Let's just say I'm tired of preaching to a deaf ear."

"Why can't you accept that you were being unnecessarily paranoid?"

"Being paranoid keeps you safe."

"And single!"

And he started laughing again. "Hey Mike!" he shouted at the man sitting a few tables away. "Read anything funny lately?"

Mike looked up from his book and said, "As a matter of fact, I just started Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, which is quite funny. After all, it's Pratchett. But I can't say the same about the last three books I read."

"Which ones?" I asked.

"Philip Pullman's first two His Dark Materials books, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter."

"Are they any good?"

"Oh, they're fantastic, all three of them. I'm aching to read the last in Pullman's trilogy. He's got one fantastic imagination. But the bookstore was out of stock when I last checked. And Hawthorne takes you back to the 1600s, and compares the life in the US then, with life in 1850. You get a trip to two different time frames, in the same book."

"So the English used in the Scarlet Letter isn't giving you any trouble?" I asked. Mike had complained about that when he read The Pickwick Papers.

"Well, for one, The Scarlet Letter is much shorter. And I guess it's a little easier once you get used to it. Just like reading Shakespeare." With that he returned to his book.

"What's so difficult about reading Shakespeare?" asked Anil.

"I don't think he was referring to the condensed shorter versions you read in school when you were ten," I pointed out.

"You mean those weren't the originals?"

And we all laughed.

First: Beginning: The BlogLand Chronicles - 1
Previous: Going South: The BlogLand Chronicles - 2

"Hi!" said Manish as he came in to BlogLand and sat down with Anil and me.

"Hello," I replied. "And Happy People Again Day."

"What?"

"Re-Public?"

"Ouch!" he groaned. "That's the pits."

"Oh, come on," I said. "Anil didn't like it either. I thought it was a good one."

"Well, in that case, your sense of humour is probably dead," said Anil.

"Anyway," he continued. "Guess who I'm taking to see King Kong tonight."

"You have a date?" asked Manish, surprised.

"You're going out with that internet girl again?" I said.

"Why do you have a problem with her, anyway?"

"You're going out with someone you met on the internet?" Manish had a lot of catching up to do.

"Yes he is," I replied. "And I don't have a problem with her personally, but I just don't think it's safe."

"Man, you're paranoid. I'm not a five-year-old!"

"How did you meet her?" asked Manish.

"In an internet chat room," I replied for Anil.

His eyes widened as he looked at me and then at Anil. "Cool!"

"So you don't think there's anything wrong with meeting someone you know only through a chat room?" I asked.

"Of course not," he replied. "People have been making friends without meeting them for a very long time now. First there were pen-friends, then phone-friends, then email and chat friends, and now people meet through blogs and SMS. The medium may be changing, but the concept is the same. There has always been an element of risk involved, but as long as you take the usual precautions, it's no big deal."

Anil smiled. "Okay, you win," I sighed. "Hope you enjoy your evening."

"How come you're taking her to an action movie, though?" asked Manish. "Shouldn't you have picked a chick-flick or something?"

"Oh, the movie was her pick. I was going to suggest Chicken Little. But once she suggested King Kong, I thought I'd keep my mouth shut."

We all laughed. That's the problem with stereotypes. Lots of men like poetry, and lots of women prefer sports. But while women are free to display masculine interests, the reverse can get a man laughed at. A man who knows how to knit a sweater will probably pretend he doesn't know how to hold a knitting needle.

"Ugh!" came a voice from the next table. Mike was slowly closing a book and putting it down on his table with a disgusted look on his face.

"Was it that bad?" Anil asked him.

"Extremely," said Mike as he turned to look at us.

"Which book?" I asked.

"One Night @ The Call Centre," he replied. "Chetan Bhagat. The guy's first book was quite readable, even if it wasn't spectacular. This one is the pits. Some parts are nice, but the rest..."

He obviously was finding it hard to put his feelings into words.

"How about that other book your were reading," said Anil. "Inscrutable Americans, I think it was?"

"Oh, that was really good," Mike said immediately. "Wonderfully written. Anurag Mathur is extremely funny most of the time, and can get quite serious too when he wants to." He turned to look at the book he had just finished reading. "But this..." He looked like he had been forced to bite a live frog.

"Well," I said. "Hope you have something better to read next. You shouldn't have to end People Again Day with something that makes you look like that."

"People what day?" said Mike. "Oh. Republic. That was pathetic."

Manish and Anil laughed. "I really think you should give it up," said Anil. "It really is a bad joke."

"Fine!" I shrugged.

Next: Baby Talk: The BlogLand Chronicles - 4

First: Beginning: The BlogLand Chronicles - 1

"You should meet my new girlfriend," said Pankaj, as I tried to concentrate on putting my latest blog idea to words.

"Mm-hm," I responded, trying not to get distracted, and at the same time also trying my best not to seem rude.

"She's a Saudi babe," he went on.

Maybe I'm prejudiced, but the sound of those two words in the same sentence somehow didn't seem right, and as my blog idea evaporated, I turned to look at him. "A what?"

"A Saudi babe," he repeated. "You know."

I had an image in my head of Pankaj dating a woman in a black burqa but somehow the image didn't make sense. Pankaj's girlfriends tended to be women who were interested in the latest fashion trends. They looked at my three-year-old straight-fit jeans with disgust. "They're so nineties," one had said. "They're so out of fashion, if you hold on to them a little longer they'll probably come back." That was good advice. Jeans don't come cheap.

"No I don't know," I said to Pankaj. I don't know why people say "You know" like that. As if saying that will make it come true!

"Man, sometimes you're so dense it's infuriating. Oh, here she comes."

"Hey honey!" he shouted in the direction of the door, and a very Indian looking girl walked in. And she was not wearing a burqa either. Instead, she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that must have made it extremely difficult to breathe. And her name was Mohini.

As Pankaj made the introductions and headed towards the counter to get their coffees, Mohini sat down at my table. "Pankaj told me you're a blogger," she said.

"Yes, I am," I replied, wondering if she thought it was a job description. "And you're from the middle-east."

She seemed stunned. "Not at all! In fact I've never been outside India."

"Oh?" I replied, completely confused. Pankaj changed girlfriends practically every week. Was he confusing this one with someone else?

"I'm from Kerala," she said. "I've lived there most of my life."

"Like I was telling you," said Pankaj coming back with two glasses of Cold Coffee in his hands. "A total Southern chick."

She must have liked being called something that's just hatched from an egg, because they both grinned widely at that. I was wondering why Pankaj equated South-Indian women with Saudi women when I realized that he'd being pronouncing the 'th' in 'Southie' like the 'th' in 'Southern', so I just smiled.

"Mohini is a terrific singer," bragged Pankaj.

"Oh, that's nice," I smiled. In that T-shirt? Talk about breath control.

"Yes, she's performed on Radio too!"

"Oh, Pankaaaaj!" she drawled. "You're embarrassing me!"

Ugh! Why do women say things they clearly don't mean? Pankaj knew she was clearly enjoying the bragging, so he went on to talk about how she'd trained as a dancer for years and sung professionally, and won medals for gymnastics, and...

I have an uncle who claims he can sleep with his eyes open. It was very helpful in college, he's told me. I wished I could do that right then.

After what seemed like an eternity, they were done with their coffees (Mohini only had half of hers because she had to 'watch her figure', even though I thought that was Pankaj's job) and the two of them left.

I thought I'd finally be able to get some blogging done when my friend Anil walked in with a girl who must have been his "internet date". She was extremely beautiful and Anil was looking triumphant. If she didn't end up robbing him by the end of the week, he was going to make me eat every single word I had ever uttered against the idea of looking for women in internet chat-rooms.

Luckily for me, he didn't bring her over to my table to brag. I watched them as he pulled out her chair for her, trying to be the perfect gentleman. Relieved, I returned to writing my latest blog post, and reading a dozen others.

After around an hour, Anil sat down at my table. I looked up and noticed that the girl seemed to have left. Anil was grinning ear to ear.

"So?" he asked.

"She looked quite beautiful," I said honestly.

"See?" he beamed. "I told you that you were wrong!"

"Fine," I replied. "So she's probably not a truck driver. But you still don't know anything about her."

"You're such a pessimist!" he laughed. "Don't worry. I'm in no danger of being murdered in the near future. Or being robbed, either. I'm not giving her my address until I have some more background. I'm not stupid, you know."

I was quite surprised. I'd expected Anil to have proposed marriage on the first date. He usually came across as quite a desperate character. I realized it was probably all just an act.

When I didn't say anything, he smiled. "Ah, you don't know."

I smiled too. "I must say that I seem to have misjudged you."

"Yes, you did," he said. Turning to look at Mike the book-lover, Anil shouted, "Mike, my man!"

"Do you have to shout?" muttered Mike who was sitting only one table away.

Anil grinned. "New book, I see? So you finally finished that Pickwick book?"

"The Pickwick Papers. Yes. Finally finished it last night." It had been the first instance we'd known, of Mike taking a week to finish a book.

"And what's that you're reading now?"

"Anurag Mathur's Inscrutable Americans," Mike replied. "I realized that I'd never gotten around to reading it."

"Tell me how you like it when you're done."

"Why?" said Mike. "Don't tell me you actually plan to read the book!"

"No way!" said Anil. "I just want to sound intelligent the next time someone talks about Indian authors!"

I sighed with relief. Now that was the Anil I knew.

Next: Republic Day: The BlogLand Chronicles - 3

There I was sitting in BlogLand, sipping on the last dregs of an Ice Mocha Moka (I wonder where they come up with these names), waiting for Anil. He was supposed to have met me there two hours before, which explained the three empty glasses of Moka next to my laptop.

I was in the middle of a debate with myself about whether I should order a fourth Moka or not, when Anil walked in.

"Sorry, man! Totally forgot about you. I got busy chatting."

Now Anil was the perfect example of the kind of guy who shouldn't have any luck with women on the internet. The scary thing was, he managed to befriend a new girl every week, and would spend hours chatting with them online.

"Why do you do it, Anil?" I asked.

"Do what?" he replied, as if he didn't know what I was referring to. We'd had a number of conversations about my disapproval of his trying to meet women in chat rooms.

"This obsession of yours, of course."

"I really don't understand why you have this problem with my attempts to get a girlfriend."

"A girlfriend? In a chat room? A girlfriend out of a conversation that begins with A/S/L? Anil, these women you're meeting could be 53-year-old male truck drivers, for all you know!"

"Man, you could be a 53-year-old truck driver, for all I know." After a pause, he added, "Well, in a quarter of a century or so."

I glared at him.

"Anyway, I'm meeting her for coffee tomorrow."

"What?!" I was stunned. "You're meeting this one?"

"Yep. Right here."

"Here? What if she's a he? And what if she's a serial killer! Anil, BlogLand is a coffeehouse for bloggers. I won't let you desecrate this place by bringing your chat room flings here."

"Serial killer? Desecrate? I think you've lost your marbles for sure this time. And anyway, BlogLand is a coffeehouse that also provides special services for bloggers. It's not a temple. And I really don't think BJ has any intention of driving away paying customers."

I looked at BJ - the proprietor of BlogLand - for support as he sat behind the counter. BJ just looked at me and shrugged.

BJ was a retired blogger. No one knew what his screen name had been, though he'd mentioned that he had been very popular when he blogged, and that the pressure to blog everyday had just become too much.

He'd started BlogLand a year before, with the intention of making blogging tools more accessible. The place was essentially a coffeehouse/internet-center that provided the added service of helping customers with their blogging needs. You could hire a laptop for an hour that came with wireless internet access and pre-installed blogging tools. If you had a laptop, you could hook on to BlogLand's wireless network for a fee. If you ordered something to eat or drink, the internet access was free. BJ also helped customers make changes to their blog designs, and if the need arose, he'd help them fix a broken blog. If you didn't have a blog, BJ would encourage you to start one and show you how. If you were interested in reading blogs instead of writing them, there was always BJ's daily recommended-reading list.

BJ wouldn't turn away non-believers (that was the term he used for people who didn't write or read blogs). He'd just try to convert them. And if that didn't work, there was always coffee.

"What's your problem with chat rooms anyway?" continued Anil. "I've never seen you complain about Bloggers' Meets. How come meeting strangers through a blog is okay, but meeting people in chat rooms is considered an act of desperation? It's just hypocrisy, I think."

"Oh, come on! When you meet someone through a blog, you've read the stuff they write. They've read stuff you write. There's a bit of background. Bloggers' meets are not about desperate single men and women!"

"Internet chat rooms aren't all about desperate men or women either. But how can you be so sure that what you say, is true for every single person out there meeting someone through a blog?"

He had me there. And he knew it. He also knew that I hated losing an argument. So by way of changing the topic, he looked at my three glasses of Ice Mocha Moka and said, "I'm going to order an Espresso. One more for you?"

I nodded.

As he brought the drinks back to the table, Anil looked at my glass and said, "Why do you insist on having this horrid concoction all the time? And four of them in a row?"

"It's not horrid," I said, taking my glass from him. "It's quite nice, in fact. Also, it's one of the few things BJ has with no coffee in it. You know I hate coffee."

"Yes. You hate the smell. You're weird. I mean, who in this world, hates the smell of coffee?!"

"I do. And," I continued, "do you need me to remind you that I've been waiting here for you, for the past two hours?"

Anil laughed. "Man, I thought you'd have forgotten about that by now!"

"Hey Mikeo!" he called at the T-shirt clad, spectacle-wearing man at the next table. Mike, as usual, was reading a book while sipping on a large cappuccino. He had a blog in which he mostly wrote book reviews. He read two or three books in a week, and a few times he'd hit as many as seven books in seven days.

"Yeah?" Mike growled. He didn't like being disturbed when he was reading, and Anil loved to do exactly that.

"What book are you reading?" he asked.

"Dickens's The Pickwick Papers."

"Well, how is it?"

"I've been reading it for over a week now," he replied sullenly.

"A week?!" said Anil, genuinely shocked. "How thick is it anyway? You've been reading that for more than seven days?" Mike had finished Lord of the Rings in six days.

"It's seven hundred and fifty pages of tiny text, and has English from 1836. I'm almost done, though. Do you know what a portmanteau is?"

"Port man toe?" repeated Anil. "The toe of a man who works at a port, maybe?"

"It's a sort of suitcase."

"Then why don't they call it that in the first place?"

Mike rolled his eyes.

"So is it any good?"

"Yes, actually it is really good. The humour is sometimes subtle and at other times extremely loud. The characterization is simply amazing. And of course reading something from two centuries ago also gives you a wonderful insight into the culture of that time."

"Right," said Anil blankly. Mike shrugged and returned to his book.

Anil turned back to me and said, "If you gave me a book that was seven hundred and fifty pages long with words like Port-Man-Toe, I'd take a month to read it."

"Anil, you'd take a month to read a Famous Five book. I think you'd find The Pickwick Papers a little heavy for your consumption."

"I didn't understand that last word you used," he said.

We both laughed.

Next: Going South: The BlogLand Chronicles - 2