Long silence.

You are used to it, aren't you ?

Remember that girl who was all excited about the concept of a blog several years ago? She was inspired by her friend, panvista. She was sitting in an auto, caught in Bangalore traffic. It was another long lunch session that ended at Jayanagar Corner House. People loved "Death by Chocolate" but she loved their fudge sundaes, with lots of cashews. But I digress.

It was a typical Indian summer, it must have been about a hundred degrees (she counts in Farenheit these days). Her friends were talking about a cool tool that panvista uses, called a blog.She was inspired, and couldn't wait to get back to the office so she could create her own. Those offices in India had firewalls, as she now recollects. She couldn't wait to get back to try and see if blogger was.

To her surprise, it worked. It was still early days and she had to choose a name. It was 2004, and she was still a Bitsian. She hadn't officially graduated , and was nowhere close to getting over it. What was the one thing that defined her stay at BITS? What was the one memory she would carry on forever? Vivitsa , of course. And hence this blog was born.

She typed away , sitting in the 10th floor of Jupiter.Or was it Saturn? Memory blurs. She remembers the cafeteria. It was fittingly called The Earth. Those tea sessions, the snacks , the bus ride home, listening to that new-fangled radio channel. She was definitely "youth", the target audience. They'd play the radio channel at the cafeteria.Her friends would discuss those remixes and that new DJ who was sitting in a cosy office bang on M.G. Road watching the bumper-to-bumper Bangalore traffic.

She blogged about this and that and everything else. She found blogger friends. As blogging caught on , so did her office firewall. She couldn't wait to come home and write. She would sometimes save drafts in her email address. Wait what was it called again? The email service had a green interface and had a very teen flavor to it. She used it because that was the only email service that escaped the firewall. She remembers her username, she forgets the domain. Was it epals? Maybe.

She made friends through her blog. Why she even got her gmail invite through panvista, who was her blogger friend now. In those days, gmail let you invite five friends. It was an exclusive club, she recalled. You had to really be special or lucky to get into the "cool club". Bangalore had a really trendy , affordable retail clothes store by the same name, come to think of it. Her best friend at that time used to get her trendy clothes from that store for her birthday. Her best friend. Funny story. But that's for another day.

(To be continued... )
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