The grand meet-up!
So it finally happened! When I’d first chhedofied the idea of a meet-up it was quite tentatively. You see, this was my first official Pfc meet (well, so it was for Pfc as well, hehehe) and till then I had met only Karthik Krishnan who is as scary in person as he sounds on the site so was wondering how would it be meeting others who just might be like him. Jokes apart, well, it was cool! Quite cool infact. 
And the others ain’t like him!
Prastut hain ek vistrit report apki samvaadaata Fatema Kagalwala se.
15th June, 5 pm Juhu Mocha it was and Karthik, Phoenixnu, Vasan, Kenny and yours truly kicked off the historic meet-up with cheering over glasses of water, well, in our hearts and minds. (I did. And guys, if you didn’t, then shame on you!) And we also did something that we kept doing for the rest of the evening. Yes, remind ourselves of our names so that we’d never forget them for the rest of our lives. Kya karte, despite our self-proclaimed fame no one knew the names of all those present and everytime someone dropped in there had to go our names flying around at Mocha. Guess, the waiters will know us better next time around!!!
Srinivas-the-guy-who-met-Tarantino and Siddharth-NOT-Pillai (Sorry to the original Siddharth Pillai, for almost killing you with hiccups today) joined our coy little group and things started warming up. Not so poetic, but log judte gaye aur karvaa banta gaya and after a good amount of harassment of the sweaty-already-too-harassed-but-I-will-do-my-best-for-you Manager we parked our asses at a no smoking corner and promptly started smoking. Unless we flaunt the rules, what’s the fun otherwise?
Soon enough, the remaining battalion of this great piece of history joined in namely Neil (remember he said his accent is like Upen Patel? He kinda looks a little like that too. Well, Thani we just might have more women writers on Pfc after reading this. Happy?),
Manjeet, Playback (Dude, I haven’t got your name right yet and absolutely did not want to embarass myself and you publicly so forgive me. Especially after hearing about your err habit of leaving Caps on…;-)),
Sourav (mystery clue – he holds the key to our next meet-up so all wannabe attendees treat him very right!),
Sudhir Nair aka RGV (Boss thappa lag gaya hain ab!) Thani and Navdeep (who just couldn’t stop asking for gossip. Man, you don’t read newspapers or what I say?So cheaply and easily available too. Midday at EVERY signal and Mumbai mirror free with TOI. Wish they’d make TOI free too…oh never mind!)
Followed by Shivajee Chandrabhushan (The man does NOT talk only to those who praise Frozen, do you get that all of you? I haven’t even seen it and he well, err…hell he asked my name now didn’t he? Just joking!)
Vivek, (More about him later!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He has sent aspirations for Pfc skyrocketing!),
George apna Medium (fresh from the glory of having been selected at NID, Bravo boy! And we mean it!) with Rahul
As well as Ashish Shukla who left too early coz he had to cut his birthday cake in the night! (Remember all to wish him tomorrow!)
What a boisterous group we made! The waiter kept thrusting the menu under our noses as we kept forgetting to order in the pure nirvanic joy of meeting our co-Pfc-ites. We laughed, joked, gossiped, discussed, everything under the sun from Amitabh’s err…haircuts to his latest movie to re-makes (the Pfc obsession), to RGV’s blog, to who had seen which movie and liked which one and who was looking forward to which movie with talks of (well, I was the only one to keep saying that but then what the heck!) starting a film club of sorts, jamming up to watch films together (no one heard me but then I am used to it), to featured writers not writing anything on Pfc anymore (You guys listening????), what is commercial cinema and etc etc etc.
The best thing, the meet-up wasn’t about networking or making an impression or doing some intellectual you-know-what or letting your hair down and partying hard. It just was. Oh and yeah we also spoke of existentialism in movies besides whether the writer makes a better director of the film and the Pfc new look. None of these substantial topics lasted for more than a minute and three sentences exchanged. Sample –
Navdeep – As a matter of fact there is this whole debate about whether the writer of the film would make a better director. But I don’t think so… (Don’t kill me for not getting it verbatim ha.)
Vivek – Yes, that’s because the writer is supposed to have visualised the film etc…
Thani – That’s true but not necessarily does he make a better director.
To which Navdeep heartily agreed and we started talking about more interesting things in the world of cinema. Like Celina Jaitley’s experimentation with her bikinis, her reading habits and penchant for getting molested wherever she goes. I told you guys you missed it!
In between such life-ascertaining conversations we drooled over how much Shivajee won for his Frozen (or so we would like him to believe. Hehehe) were rivetted by his and Srinivas’s excerpted accounts of IFFLA and other festivals, (Seriously!) (And Srinivas, put up the Part 3 and 4 now, chalo.) and about who has the right to criticize whom.
This brought about a ‘major’ debate that sprung between Karthik and Shivajee (major coz it lasted for more than three sentences, five I think it went upto.) It involved the reasoning behind such statements, the contrasts and comparisons between a film-maker and a cook, a film-maker and other such makers sharply to be punctuated with Navdeep’s ‘Guys, the worst is when someone comes out of a preview and starts criticising a film on your face immediately. It’s like telling a man who has just descended from the marriage pandal that his wife is a dog!’ (Man where did you get that gem from Navdeep??????) Thani had a nice intellectual rejoinder to it but then we were too taken in by the dog-wife to give him a chance.
But the clincher of the evening was when Vivek, our very own Pfc kiddo raised a very pertinent question about the existence of our blog. Sitting rapt in attention in almost the middle of the circle of knowledgeable gentleman and a lady, Vivek decided to understand the logistics of Pfc more clearly and piped in to ask -
‘Guys, where is the Pfc office?’
(Select background music of your own choice to play here.)
To this Navdeep said something very hilarious which isn’t really right to put up here… ;-))
But then Vivek left me with a thought that I will ponder for long. Isn’t every movie existential in the sense it examines existence…Hmmm…think about it.
Srinivas kept cribbing about his band practice (ooops that sounds like a dhol-nagada band! Oh, you know I don’t mean that!) but just couldn’t resist our charm and left quite late. We hung on for quite sometime after that and refused to leave until the waiter thrust the bill under our noses this time and pointedly reminded me that he had left the bill. How rude, hunh!
But.
It was totally cool. Not many around knew each other. If there were the excessively talkative ones there were the silent ones too. First-timer reservations I suppose, which will wear off soon. The best thing for me was the easy camaraderie. All of us were in a mood to chill and chill out we did. I met so many whose posts I had read and who were only pseudonyms for me until today. It was relaxing and enjoyable. We could have gone on, I guess, had it not been for the dratted waiter. Next time, we will have a one up one you Mocha!
I had no reservations for this one but am really looking forward to the next one!
And here are the pics – share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZtG7du4ZNWLjI¬ag=1
Though we may look a little grim in the pics that is only coz of severe lack of light and my awesomely ‘good’ camera which ensured that I was andhere-mein-teer-maroing while clicking and the ‘posees’ didn’t even know they were posing.
Enjoy!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
pictures kidhar hai?
Aa rahe hain, aa rahe hain. We have about 90 pics. Uploading mein time toh lagta hain na Mainak!
no bloodddy pics fatema?!! grrrrrrrr!!!!
Uffff, patience!!!
shant gadadhari bheem shant!!! bacchi ki jaan loge kya!!!
supercool
I envy you guys soooo much!!!
and yeah Fatema, PICS KAHAN HAIN??!!! :D
Ek Ghanta Ho chuka hai!
Picture upload karne mein itna time?
Ek Ek karke upload ho raha hai ka?
Grrrrrrrrrrrr…!!!Ok for all those whose curiosity is spilling over like forgotten milk boiling on my stove here’s an incomplete album of the pics. http://www.shutterfly.com/view/pictures.jsp
Still uploading though…Once done, will put up with the main write-up.
Its asking me to sign in….
I dont wanna register there.
Oho stop fussing!
@mainak
arey you just have to enter a name and email id yaar!
In any case, Fatema, the link you gave doesn’t take me to your album.
Hain??? Wait shall check again. So sorry.
No
Its asking my email address & password.
What happened to PFC Picasaweb?
Give me the link and I’ll transfer the pics there.
Fatema why dont you make the album in Shutterfly public instead of private.
Your default setting might be to make every album private.
Then it will not ask for our info.
Does it make sense?
Trying it…
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZtG7du4ZNWLjI¬ag=1
See if this works. Trying something else as well.
Eureka!!!!!!
Finally!!!
Yeah! I rest in peace now. It’s five in the morning!!! Enjoy the pics and bye bye till tomorrow!
pappu can’t dance sala!… Darn… THAT WAS FUN!!! Wish I was there!
ehehe :-) thanks Fatema..
but why are there no CAPTIONS?!!!!!!!!!!! grrrrrrrrr
how are we gonna understand whose who??!! GRrrrrrrrrr
ehehehhehehehe
grrr
grrrr
Captions plz……….
Yes, captions please! Introduce everyone…!
Well done Fatema, you’ve put up this post and pics promptly.
Wish I was there.
great stuff fatema and PFC-mumbai.. looking great!
Thanks Fatema, for spearheading the task and making it a grand success!!
Oz, looks like we found our event manager.
Captions/names/introduction/comments?
sausage fest…
but looks liike fun
Nice write up…good effort..we need to thank Fatema for co-ordinatng the meet..good show..I loved this meet.
Darn!! missed it.. shutterfly is not opening:) PICS.. ???
@Suchita..
Click on the link within the post..i just check it..
Thanx Sourav!!
Aweee everybody looks so cool!!! Navdeep is there, and Manjeet , and KK and Vasan…don’t know the remaining faces:) and there is only one woman…. yeah!!…. that must be Fatema!!! where are the women??? no women is interested in filmmaking????..
but wow.. it rocks!!! keep going!!!
@Suchita,
The topic of why not many women in PFC was raised by Thani at the meet…and someone told Thani that they read your articles and run away…Fatema great work…Thanks again.
wahh Fatema…enjoyed your post…must have been a great experience….
Priceless comment by Vivek…PFC office kidar hain..hehehe..
btw is Vivek same as Vivek.H?
Guys sorry abt the no captions for the pics. It was quite late by the time I finished uploading it all. Shall do it asap!
@ Shivajee.. ha ha ha…
Congrats for all the awards, and accolades…waiting to see your film..best,
[attractive webpage of frozen]
Happy Birthday Ashish….
Oyye guys..abbei..what were you drinking? the bill was more than 2k just for coffee’s? geeezzz…sooo expensive?
@suchita…I hope you will find the film as attractive as the website…
Thank you…
@ Shivajee….am sure..
@ Fatema.. am more keen to know who looks like Upen Patel:)))
Ok done with the captions.
Thanx OM!
Thanx for the event guys…I wish we meet like this every alternate month if poss or may watch films together as we have done earlier…I missed lot of stuff I guess..wish too c u guys soon!
…btw superb coverage Fatema!
@Ashish bhai…Many Happy Returns of The Day…dudho nahaao puto phalo…
Thanx Shivajee Sir!..hehe..
Great Work Fatema!!!
a pleasure to witness an in-form Navdeep and Shivaji. as was relating to real names corresponding to inventive online identities. good fun. happy birthday Ashish!
Anurag Kashyap’s presence was sorely missed.
would be interesting to make possible all our featured authors’ presence.
as agreed unanimously, we should get together more often.
Thanks guys. Me loved writing the account. Yes, Anurag’s absence was sorely missed and it would be great to have a meet with all featured authors. Shall try to get it together Thani!
@ Suchita – Pics are captioned now. Check it out for yourself! ;-))
@fatema…great!! had great fun.
Thanks Fatima, for your efforts…you seem to have spent the whole night uploading pics…plus the captions!!
Met around 8 new faces…simply awesome!!
Met Shivajee the man, who gave us Frozen!!
Highlight for me was to get my 200rs back from KK after so many attempts in the past..cant believe it happened:)
we heard the best story after it got over. some of us got into shivajee’s car as we all were going in d same direction. me n mnay others met kenny for the first time. kenny was doing enginering(computers) from IIT delhi before he decided to quit it all and try his luck in acting. with a story like his, u r bound to think…wow, this is it! so we started talking to kenny. why he quit ? arre it wasnt working. i quit or they anyway were going to kick me out. its not my kind of thing. i couldt carry it.
but dude, u cracked the iit entrance ? thats not easy!! are woh to ST quota me ho gaya.
we couldnt stop laughing for quite sometime. are yaar, tere baare me itna accha illusion bana tha usko kyun tod raha hai. but then, how many people r so honest like him. Hey Kenny, all the best!!
no i am not the same vivek or vivek kumar
@fatema
about the existential thing almost everything that happens is technically existential
anyways lets not get intellectual i had shit loads of fun
fatema let me know if you need any help what so ever in making another meet happen and i will try my best
the celina jaitley incidents were hilarious especially the ganpati incident
im still laughing over it
ty for the good time PFC ^_^
Great work Fatema! Hope you managed some sleep.
Arre waah!!!
… seems like it was fun…
Lovely article
and a very Happy Birthday Ashish…
Missed it! Had other commitments much before PFC meet was announced.. though was excited that I could somehow manage to make it to meet.. Infact I booked for last possible flight considering so tht I can be there for as much as possible.. As soon as I could manage to run for the meeting place, I found it over!.. I thought “khoob jamegi mehfil jab mil baithenge deewane chaar” and would go till midnight but I forgot its not saturday but a sunday (next time do keep this in mind).. My Loss completely..
Some other day, some other time!
Thanx Thani…thanx rbehemoth!!
@Phoenixnu
:-) My exact, well-rehearsed line about why I quit IIT was “Agar main nahi nikalta toh woh mujhe nikaal dete.”
Phoenixnu started saying something on the lines of “I don’t really feel like watching black & white films…” when suddenly he realised the T shirt he was wearing was of American History X, which, for those who haven’t seen it, happens to be black and white for about half its running time. Great movie, and great T shirt. Maybe if (Bhagwan na kare) Phoenixnu becomes an alcoholic and loses all his work and needs money for booze he might sell me that T shirt. But from the looks of him, that’s unlikely to happen :-)
It was great meeting the PFC folks. I hate the overuse of the word ‘cool’, but that’s honestly a great adjective to apply to Navdeep Singh and Shivaji Chandrabhushan – real chilled out directors.
And it’s great that the discussions were all down to earth without using ‘intellectual’ big words.
@Kenny
…pnu said that black and white stuff and then realised that I was also present there and listening intently to this conversation…I loved the Kodak Moment :-)
Hehehhe yeah I remember that happening Shivajee! Oh should have put that one up too! Soumen’s face was worth noticing then! ;-))))
And imagine hearing something similar from kk who was sitting in the 3rd row in my car.I had my revenge as I dropped both pnu and kk very very far from their actual destinations ;-)…Guys by the way that was the vehicle which went to Ladakh in my 1st trip from Mumbai.photos in my 1st post…
Shivajee I recognized the vehicle. any trips coming soon? pnu n kk ko kuch jayda bhari saja milni chahiyae:) may be will plan something bigger for next meet
Good to see all PFCites having a get-together. Nice pics, Fatema. Now, I can recognize some PFC authors when I see them.
@OM (36), I’m not the same Vivek from Mumbai meet-up. Me not that fortunate to PFC people, yet. I stay in Texas.
bangalore PFC meeting kab hai???
jaldi plan banao yaar… subrat sun rehe ho kya???
Vivek I’m in Houston TX, If you are close by lets meet…
So please raise your hand if you are in houston
Varun, I don’t stay in Houston. I’m the same Vivek, who’s in your orkut friends list. Hope u got me.
ohh yaa….
Aur koi anyone else from Houston, TX
Vivek.H…where in Texas buddy?
OM, I’m in Kingsville, a small town around 230 miles down south of Houston and quite far from Dallas.
Made for some good reading. The way in which you have actually written those snippets of dialogues n one-liners – hilarious stuff!! Seems like you all had a great time…
@ Shivaji
Har har har…looks like I was laughing at the wrong joke then.
@Kenny,since you are my neighbour now,let me imagine that you were laughing at the wrong joke ;-)…