Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The World Is So Small...Or How I Almost Met A Fellow Blogger In Person

I know there's a surfeit of posts on my blog all of a sudden and I know that that's a weird title, but what I'm about to tell you is even more weird.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about my son's swimming team activities and a fellow blogger named Praba (who runs the colablog, Saffrontree) left a comment saying she'd just moved into the area and she wanted to find out about swim teams for her daughter.

So I responded via e-mail and offered to help with the other questions about the area if she needed it and we started chatting. She said she'd been reading my blog since way back in 2006 and I'd heard about and visited Saffrontree a few times (Tharini, one of my favorite bloggers, is a contributor), we exchanged numbers, planned to meet, etc.

Then last Saturday, after my son's swim races, my husband, myself and our two kids decided to go out to lunch at The Big Bowl in the Reston Town Center (we love the food there). After we'd been there a while and when it was almost time to leave, we saw another South Asian family settle down at Rio Grande, the Mexican restaurant across the street.

Over the next couple of days, Praba and I continued to exchange e-mails and from the way she described her family in one of the e-mails, I had a hunch it might have been the family we saw in Reston. So I wrote her an e-mail asking if it was them and she responded with a long e-mail with lots of all caps and exclamation points and smiley faces and a voice-mail. It was her!

So we spent a good part of an hour this morning talking breathlessly over the phone, with both our one year-old daughters wailing for attention in the background, just amazed at this freaky coincidence, exchanging notes about our trajectories, blogging and otherwise, that brought us so close to each other from so far away.

We've made plans to meet pronto and I, for one, can't wait to meet her and her family!

15 comments:

Tara said...

Woow!! How amazing is that!!! Seriously! And what are the odds of that having been Praba's family.

Can I say that I am darn envious now!!! I'm off to go plan another trip to DC RIGHT NOW! :P

Terri the terrific said...

Boo hoo! I was jealous of the London gang for precisely the same reason. Why is there nobody in my neck of the woods?

Gauri said...

Really Amazing :-) !!

And yes, it sure is a small world !!

Anonymous said...

sujatha:

wow!

ok, anyway, so i go to saffrontree, and the first post there is about karadi tales. i really loved 'jai jai jai jai jai; jai hanuman!'

i bought a few karadi tales in 2002, and recently sought - and received - confirmation that one of the dudes who created the series was my ex-batchmate.

anyway, i have been postponing calling him for the last few months. now i really need to, as he is getting more publicity :-).

- s.b.

Unknown said...

small world alright.. but kudoos to you both for intention and being was open.

Anonymous said...

how exciting. i am now great friends with many fellow bloggers and have spoken to some on phone, but have'nt really met anyone - accidentally or otherwise. (i did have a disastrous meeting with a chat room friend long ago though! not disastrous in a disastrous sense, but i mean this person was so amazingly articulate and humorous and interesting on chat and am sure was still a nice person of course, but JUST would'nt talk when we met! kept looking down at the ground! after a couple of such attempts, needless to say it didnt go anywhere and we have since lost touch)

anyway what i wanted to say was i stumbled upon your blog from poppins' and i like what you have to say! will be back!
d

dame's diary said...

Cool!

Praba Ram said...

I've heard relationships/friendships that last long always go with a great meeting story !


CAN'T WAIT TO MEET !!!!! :-))))

Meera Sriram said...

Wow..blog-dating (for lack of a better word), awesome! I am sure it will feel good to stick a face to all the history. Good luck guys!

-M (a friend of P)

Sujatha Bagal said...

Tharini, you should make those plans! It'll be great to meet you and you can see DC leisurely instead of rushing.

Terri's Mom, come na, to our neck of the woods! Are you very far away?

Gauri, welcome to my blog. Thanks for visiting and commenting. :)

s.b. I like Karadi tales too, except that they have to make it a tad more child friendly. Good to see you back.

Yuva, thanks.

D, gosh! I really hope that does not happen. But from the conversations we've had so far on the phone, it doesn't seem like it at all.

Thanks for your lovely comment on my writing. Please do come back and often! :)

DD, :)

Praba, same here. :)

Meera, welcome to my blog and thanks! Will keep you guys posted on how it goes. :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this! I have been looking for books to buy for my daughter, and will check into this website for sure!

Anonymous said...

oh! i don't know how my comment sounded - but i did'nt mean that that might happen to you at all!
i was just relating an experience!

am sure your meeting will be great - as i know it will be for me if i meet any of the blogging mothers that i am 'virtual' friends with!

and i really do like your blog!
d

small squirrel said...

I am just upset that I cannot eat at rice bowl. I love their lemon chicken and they have some drink with ginger in it that makes my life so happy. please see if they deliver to koramangala... LOL

small squirrel said...

LOL! I have been in bangalore too long! I typed rice bowl instead of BIG BOWL!!!!

Sujatha Bagal said...

Neela, you're welcome. :)

D, thanks. You're sweet. I didn't take any offense at all. No worries. :) Hope to see you back here many times.

J, guess what I call it unfailingly every time - MIXING BOWL!

By the way, the Mixing Bowl is just awesome! You've got to see it to believe it. Of course if you don't know where you want to land on 495 exactly, you will most certainly get lost, but for locals, it's a dream come true. Just to sail by when another ramp is packed and you'd have been stuck on in it the old Mixing Bowl is super cool!