The Delhi XLer meet that was..

Sometime back we had decided that XLers (Batch of 2007) would meet other fellow XLers in their city. I was looking forward to such a party. I took it as getting to know other XLers and just chilling over a cup of coffee or something. But we got a mail on the group asking everyone to come prepared with all the information about Trains, notebooks etc.. that kinda was something which made the whole thing look like a group discussion of sorts..

Well, as most good things start quite unexpectedly, so happened this..
Initially, Siddharth (he is an old friend of mine) and I had decided to go together. But in the afternoon he called up to say that he was out and would reach directly. I reached Cafe Coffee Day, CP at 4:35 and was wondering how would I recognize the people. Inside I went and saw some 10-11 guys standing and shaking hands.. I didn't have to think again. 2 familiar faces - one was Siddharth and one was Mohit (the guy who was interviewed before me and the guy whose father tried to calm me while I was waiting for my interview). I shook hands with everyone and with every introduction tried to place the name with the email id (that being the only source of interaction till then). I guess on my arrival we fell short of chairs and had to move to a place where more people could be seated. Some 11 guys started walking in the same direction and we reached the end of the floor where a sign was placed - "This section is closed". Normally, with such a sign there are visible indications of some kind of a work etc going on, but here everything seemed to be in order. So, we ignored the sign and started rearranging the tables to suit our convenience. We got together some 6 tables (tables at CCD are quite small.. just about enough for 3-4 cups of coffee) and arranged the chairs around them.
The waiter came.. he looked at us.. looked at the sign.. looked at us again and finally said "alright.. sit here but please let the sign remain here"! He had no clue as to where else to put us..
3-4 people came later than me.. Anshul (anshul_wow), Rishabh (Karan Johar look alike), one guy who teaches at PT and Time (I don't remember the name).. Every new entrant though started out by asking the same questions.. How many BMs? PMIRs? Experienced? Fresher? etc. etc.. For the record, there were 3 PMIRs and rest were BMs. But after we got through this, it was good fun. Between jokes and XLRI talk (hostels, culture etc..) and Jamshedpur (city, tourism, hotels etc), we talked about notebooks and train reservations.. Someone did mention loan but the topic got lost after some diffused talk (apparently, not many people are going in for the loan, atleast for the first installment).

We decided to place an order for coffee.. Divya (I guess) called for a vote - 14 for something cold, 1 (varun) for something hot. Thats it.. its settled then.. The waiter comes and Rishabh announces "1 Cappuccino and 14 Frappe's". That waiter looks at us.. starts laughing! I guess delivering 14 Frappe's to a table tickled his laughing bones. Later, people shared some of the experiences of seniors.. and after 2 hours, the CCD guys turned up the volume really high (the speakers were right by us). We assumed that this was done to remind us to leave or order something more.. On a request to the waiter to turn down the volume, exactly opposite happened. Only when Divya offered to consider buying the choclates on display, the volume was turned down to acceptable limits..

Then during the last few minutes it was plain chit chatting.. interview talks.. party talks etc.. Finally, we decided to leave and outside CCD we got a photograph clicked (actually 2 photos since the group was too big to fit in one frame!)

It was time to go.. I had a good time..