When friends don’t meet, strangers become friends. And they meet. Imagine the fire when they meet to beat something like… Delhi’s 3 degree temp. Yeah. Delhi’s culture was relived when a batch of 13 met at the Walled City’s crowded Chawri Bazaar, where one took the other for a vendor selling Daulat Ki Chaat. Oops!

A bit of self-introduction … and they’d feel each other, exploring legs at the famous Al Jawahar restaurant, where you have the liberty to pronounce kitchen as Chicken.

Strangely, Pratap Singh could smell me: “Neeraj, you are a veg. Hai na?” He’s right. I settled for a coke and preferred clicking while they ate, talked, ate and talked.

I asked Shivam, “So you blog.” “No, gimme a month, I am coming up with a unique blog.” Just 20 and he meant business. Though Shivam still loves games, you can expect him to deliver. The list of the such aspiring youth is endless; they are raring to go. Raring to live India, I (strongly) believe.

There are many already who have been balancing their lives between their profession and the social media and inventing the new India in the process. Saad Akhtar, for example, is a ‘New Media’ designer from the National Institute of Design. He works as an Interaction Designer with a software company in Delhi. His webcomic about ‘Life, and its Irritations’ has no stories, no characters, no songs, no saas and no bahu; yet your eyeballs would flirt with his works.

Ye hai mera India where you don’t know there’s a tall guy like Deeepauk Murugesan prone to hyperbole; and a compulsive liar. But he may also be inveterately honest. This is the new India, emerging slowly and gradually while the world sleeps.

I made new friends… Pratap Singh, Jayakantan, Yudhvir Dahiya, Krish Raghav, Abusalaam, Gagan Ratra and Surekha Pillai as the rest of India prepared to sleep, courtesy ‘Delhi Bloggers’ which turns seven on 13th… this month. Its brain Priyanka Sachar more popular by her cyber name “Twilight Fairy”, said: “There couldn’t be a better way to start the new year”.

Krish Ashok seemed more enthusiastic, jumping at the aaloo parathas, and savouring all kinds of carnivorous he had been waiting for long. Maybe he wanted to pheenish all before his flight could take him back to Chennai.

Ashok is one person who encourages his visitors more than they support him with their clicks. “People who actually spend time reading my blog, actually leave comments which have far more humour and wisdom in them than in my posts,” he says.

Do you then feel like joining our community? Join us… but, hey… don’t take any of us to be a chaat waala, even by mistake.