to say or not to say that i am gay

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 in Blogging, Gender, WTF by meetu

One of the ongoing blogathon topics is - “What are the challenges that society faces in accepting the concept of alternate sexuality? How can we address them?”

Religion, social norms, the basic need of a species to reproduce - none of these are in favor of alternate sexuality. Calling it “alternate” is alienating it in the first place, isn’t it?

A close friend, B’s sexual orientation has not at all been accepted. In every trip home he is asked to at least “try” to like a girl. This pressure brings with it a sense of alienation - from his own family. Why? Because he refuses to marry. Because he doesn’t want to make another human being miserable. He desperately wants a family, wants to have kids he can call his own. But, B refuses to fool a person into marriage.

It has to be innate conditioning that doesn’t allow his parents to accept that this is not a disease that needs curing. It has to be deep-seated cultural training over generations that B won’t allow himself a partner even though he stays in the west, where homosexuality is better-accepted.

Homosexuality is hardly a new concept. It must have always existed. Then why are we still finding it so difficult to accept? The one main reason religion, social norm are against it, has to be because it hinders the natural process of propagating the human race. The lack of awareness despite the long-standing existence seems to be a purposeful strategy of religion and social norms.

But better late than never. We are a well-informed generation. And if some of us are not, access to information is a few clicks away. Meanwhile, let’s do our bit to accept homosexuals as normal people (because they are, it’s a shame we are having to say it!) -

Let’s start by not pointing fingers at a man who has an effeminate behavior? Of course, not all homosexual men have effeminate behavior and certainly all men with effeminate behavior are not gay. And even if they are, so what?!

Let’s start by not giving our moviemakers the satisfaction of our snickers at their crude jokes on gays. WTF does, “main waisa nahi hoon” (I am not like that) mean?

Let’s start by accepting friends, relatives and soon enough … our children who might have sexual preferences different from ours.

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Meet the bloggers

Posted on April 2nd, 2008 in Blogging by meetu

After some coffee and sandwiches on a hot summer morning Aditya and Netra kickstarted the event by inviting speakers to paste in their topics and introduce them. This took a whole good hour, but it was fairly interesting to see how passionately or otherwise the participants presented their topics.

After organizing the topics between blogging-related, technical (barcamp) and firetalk, the 400+ participants chose the presentations they wanted to attend.

I stuck to blog-related topics for the first half of the day hoping to get some good blogging tips. Though none of the sessions had anything new to say, it wasn’t a total disappointment mainly because of the audience participation.

It wasn’t an easy audience to please at all. No presenter got away without completely justifying what they just said. Whether it was the one who called Bombayites selfish versus Chennai bloggers. Or it was something a little more technical regarding blog security. On one occasion in fact, the speaker was stalled five minutes into the presentation and it converted into a discussion.

I am sure this reaction will only make the presenters more conscious about their effort the next time around. So, all good for quality.

Overall, while the blogging presentations were very basic, the loads of people I met were extremely interesting. Even with the chaotic nature that defines these camps, I am looking forward to the next one.

Oh yeah, we got press coverage too. Can’t deny that I loved the attention ;). Only if they got my name, the name of my blog, and the blog statistics right.

  • it’s meetu or meeta
  • it’s without giving THE movie away
  • I certainly HAVEN’T received an average of 15,000 to 20,000 comments for various posts till date., wogma would have been crushed to death. What I said was each “popular movie” review gets an average of 15000 to 20000 views over its lifetime!

I can rant on and on about how irresponsible these mistakes were, but oh well, this is the blogcamp report.

Here’s what Aseem, Deep, Ideasmithy, and Jim Karter, and Sakshi (of course) thought of the blogcamp/barcamp.

And here’s some photo coverage of the camps by Brajeshwar.

As usual, like any other any event / course / seminar / workshop, this one too eventually became more about the people than the content. It was great meeting ye’all - Abhishek, Aditya, Amit, Arun, Brajeshwar, Deep, Ekalavya, Ideasmithy, Jim, Kunal, Moksh, Nirav, Ram and Ashish, Rohit, Sakshi, Tarun, and The Twisted Indifferent.

Bloggers - can’t have enough of them

Posted on March 26th, 2008 in Blogging by meetu

Eagerly looking forward to the blogcamp in Bombay. The agenda seemingly allows a lot of time to mingle, which is what excites me the most. So, if you are a blogger, go ahead and sign up!

I sort-of had a taste of what blogmeets are like the week before last. We attended a Pune blogger’s meet organized by the Indiblogger team.

This was my first blogger meet and had no clue what it works like. As it turns out, it was an avenue for people to introduce their blogs to the participants and learn a bit or two from each other. While there wasn’t much time to mingle, I did get to catch-up with Saks and Ideasmithy and meet a few new bloggers - Vineet, Tarun, and Preeti over pizza.

More power to bloggers!!

Finally!!!

Posted on February 15th, 2008 in Blogging by meetu

I have started my personal blog!! But what a cool way to start my personal blog…writing about my first party with fellow loggers. Okay, this post is two months too late, but hey, it’s here… Thanks for a great party Sakshi!

It was great putting a face to the words of Sakshi, of course Ideasmithy, and Melody at Sakshi’s birthday bash! Also met Harsh, Shiju, Peeyush, Kaushal and Hardik (who wouldn’t give me his blog url because it was technical…hmph!!).

Oops…non-bloggers are people too! Had a lovely time with Shirin, Piyush, Vikram, Pankaj, Sonu, Nahida and Naushir.

“I think this is the beginning of beautiful friendships.“