started blabbering
As the second day of IndiaFOSS was coming to an end, I sat beside my cousin outside the NIMHANS Convention, waiting for the cab to arrive. A guy came up right in front of us talking to someone on phone "and then he just started blabbering man". An awkward silence lingered between me and my cousin.
Rewinding to a month back.
I filled up for IndiaFOSS Diversity Scholarship after months of seeing the event on their site. The sorry-time's-up mail from the CNCF event in Hyderabad and my di's offer to come to Bengaluru might have fueled me up a bit too. I receive an acceptance mail on a random day and I was just so happy with the idea of me solo traveling in my early twenties and well just getting out of my home. Then followed mood swings based on the meet proceedings as I did not have proper internet connectivity at the college and the reimbursement. But somehow things fell into place. Later I realised that my anxious hyper dependent arse cannot make it alone. So I reached out on Codess.Cafe(prolly the best thing I ever got into) and asked some of my friends if they knew anyone who could accompany me.
It all felt filmsy until the very moment I stepped into airport as there was no turning back from there. My plans of vlogging of course took backseat. Suddenly it felt like going alone anywhere is stupid. I would prolly choose chaos over peace now. Having a bunch of friends who do crazy stuff and bump into you like chipmunks is way good. I am leaving out a lot of details in between but am too lazy to write it all out right now.
The Bell Jar. What do I even say about it. A burnt child dreads fire, the very reason I have been putting that book off. As Oscar Wilde put it "A burnt child loves fire", this seems to be truer as I devoured the words Sylvia had penned. The four days of pampering by my di felt calming all this time. Now that I see, I felt mostly hollow.
On the first day of event, the sweet sambar, talking about organising an MLH Hackathon, exploring the booths, collecting stickers and the paraphernalia went on. I could not muster up courage to talk to Kailash sir, whose writings I have high regards for, all the while he was right in front of me. The motion capture stuff was just way too cool. The guy beside me dozed off but not having intellectual curiosity is not something that can be helped. The strudel music jam was fun but I left halfway. I left off knowing a dozen opportunities. The second day, I went to few amazing talks(I judge them on the basis of narration and creativity fyi). I took the pain to analyse and decide which ones to go to and turns out I did well because no one "blabbered". Using tech to understand humane stuff- the city around you, the humongous trees (and politics!) is cool and the puns and jokes in between are something I could never come up with. The chocolate ice cream deserves a special mention.