Your Mind is Mine: The Ugesh Sarcar Show

Your mind is mine! (Photo credit)

When Blogadda sent me a tweet asking if I wanted to attend the Ugesh Sarcar show, I had no idea what it was. I went online and did a quick search for the name. The results were intriguing. Ugesh Sarcar is a mentalist, psychic and street magician. I think the first two terms are enough to pique anyone’s interest in the show. I am usually curious about new things and I thought this would be something different. In hindsight, I am glad that I agreed to go. I was eligible for couple platinum passes for the show. Since I had no +1 with me, I went on my own. 

The helpful staff of Blogadda helped my find the venue when I was a little unsure. I reached there and found the ticket counter. The line for everyone was the same. When I found people there holding booking codes, I wondered if I had to do the same. But when my turn came, it was all sorted with the seat number and everything. I collected my ticket and went to the waiting area where others were also waiting. There were some interesting things around even when we were waiting. That’s for you to find out when you go to the next Ugesh Sarcar!

I was full of skepticism and wondered how anyone could read someone’s mind. But the show justified the hype. Ugesh Sarcar, the son of renowned magician MC Sarcar, has grown up with magic around him. And when he steps on the stage, it’s like he just walked out of the poster of the show. The mysterious kohl-ed eyes, the black attire and the black hat complete the look. The big difference - this street magician has no rabbits coming out of his hat. The tricks he performed blew our minds. It is a pretty powerful thing to be able to read people’s minds and doing that before a live audience is the mark of a true genius! He found answers to questions people only thought of during the show and guessed numbers that were random. 

Although I am sure there are strong scientific principles behind these ‘tricks', it was a unique experience to witness something like this before our eyes. And it was all the more special for me since it was my first time and I had no expectations. I’d recommend this show to anyone who hasn’t yet been to it. It's hard to do justice to the real thing in blog posts. 

(Disclaimer: This post is not a paid one and the views here are from my own experience of the show)

5 awesome events I went to in 2015

Photo credit

Continuing my countdown posts, I want to talk about some great events I went to this year. In fact, like I already mentioned in an earlier post, 2015 has been a very social year for me. Thanks to social media that kept me abreast of various events around me, I managed to catch up with quite a few. So here are the top 5 of them:

1. The year began with Social Media Week in Bangalore. I was on the official social media team and was part of the work and fun right from the very center of where it all gets organised. Not just my first time as a volunteer, but also the first time I met so many people from Twitter in real! You can see the pictures and the full account here:

My experience at the Social Media Week, Bangalore 

2. One of my dreams is to be part of the live audience at TED talks. I started on the journey this year by attending TEDxGateway Women, an event for women only speakers. From the inspiring Leila Seth to the very charismatic Natalie Di Luccio - each woman had touching stories of their successes to share. Read all about it here:

TEDxGateway Women: A day with inspiring women

3. It is always fun and learning at blogging events and #WIN15 by Blogadda was no different. A day full of exciting talks by experts in blogging and social media and the energy of the host Siddharth Kannan kept us going for the day!

#WIN15: the brilliant blogging event by Blogadda

4. Just as we were getting over the frenzy of #WIN15, Indiblogger had the much awaited blogging event of the year ready for us. #BNLF was undoubtedly the baap of all blogging events this year with speakers like Jeff Bullas, Arnab Ray, Purba Ray, Bruce Dickinson and Christophe Trappe. One whole day of networking and learning followed by master classes by Jeff and Christophe the following day - this was the best way to end the year on the blogging front.

#BNLF: My review of the most disruptive blogging event of the year

5. Though the event I most looked forward to, I seem to have not done a post on it! The Sheroes Summit was a the highlight of the year for me. I have been following them on Twitter for sometime now. And it was a great experience to meet so many women passionate about fulfilling their career dreams. The speakers shared their journeys of having set up businesses with the star guest of the day being none other then Shilpa Shetty herself. (Maybe I should do a post on this later)

As the countdown is moving towards its close, I am glad I thought of writing these posts. My new year eves are generally trying to resist the temptation of pinning too much hope on the new year. But this one has been a great experience looking back at the new year recalling its best moments in tjhis unique way!

#NaBloPoMo Day 20: Why concision is important in writing

Ernest Hemingway was once challenged, as the story goes, by his fellow writers to write a 6 word story that could make people cry. The bet was for $10 which Hemingway won for coming up with - For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. A perfect example of a poignant story which does have a beginning, a middle and an end. And a whole lot of possibilities you are left with. True work of a genius!

I attended a creative writing workshop today sponsored by Blogadda as part of Social Media Week in Mumbai. It was titled Spinning content: Writing for the Web. While the workshop threw up no specific learnings, we started with an interesting activity. It was similar to the story I just narrated. We were supposed to draw, not write, our place of origin, favourite food, hobby and where we see ourselves in 5 years. And we were to pair up and introduce our partners in 6 words which would include the information we got from the drawings. Challenging, at first. But some of us got it pretty well!

The terseness could be achieved only by stripping all the additional articles, pronouns and sometimes, even verbs. I think the more scope we are given, the more verbose we get. Concision is always a principle I have believed in and one of the important concepts that William Zinsser talks about in his very inspirational book, On Writing Well. By actually doing this activity and trying to fit everything in 6 words was a memorable lesson in the concept. And the result is quite brilliant because every word has a solid place in the sentence. It is not diluted by supporting syntactical structures.

Can you introduce yourself in 6 words? Preferably a sentence that makes sense rather than a string of adjectives? I am going to try writing mine tonight. Do share yours with me in comments so that the other readers can read too.

#WIN15 - The Brilliant Blogging Event By Blogadda

A day full of meeting people and having fun is great. It's even greater when it involves your passion - writing in this case. I blog for my passion for writing. And it is always a bonus to get to learn the ropes from stalwarts in the field. I registered well in advance for #WIN15 and was super excited about it. Though it was a little early and too long for a Sunday, I was there nice and early. I was greeted by smiling (and not sleepy) faces at the registration desk. I was also asked to give out a video byte about what I look forward to the most in the day. (Btw, I got to check if that went on air!). Once I was in, it was catching up with people I knew and the game of - doesn't that guy look like X on Twitter - began for me.

The event was in a huge hall and the stage was all set by the time we took our seats. The entry of the host of the day - Siddharth Kannan - on a cycle, greeting people on the way was an apt introduction to how much fun we were going to have with him. The event was divided into talks in the first half and workshops in the second. The day began with story telling with Lakshmi Pratury of INK talks who spoke about how to identify passionate story tellers.

Next up was a very interesting talk by Dhaka based blogger Rezwan who spoke about how blogging in evolving in his country. That was followed by Huffpost India editor, Sruthijith telling us about the best way to keep blogging and writing. The talk on travel blogging by Ajay Jain threw light on the lesser known aspects of travelling and blogging. It was pretty inspirational to know how traveling had really made him evolve as a person. This was followed by a chat session Anaggh Desai and Aditya Magal - the Gods of blogging. The morning sessions ended with talks on the business of blogging. Harini Calamur, Ashok Lalla and Prashanth Challapalli delivered insightful talks about how bloggers could monetize their blogs by writing for brands.

By the time we were out for lunch, these sumptuous designer cakes made by the talented chefs of JW Sahar greeted us in the lobby. Networking continued during lunch where we caught up with more people who had walked in late in the morning.

These are all cakes!!!!

The workshops began post lunch. There were two workshops in each slot and hence you could choose just one. Since the first set of workshops were on food and travel blogging - both not my area of interest, I decided to wander around. I ended up in one of the other venues hosted by Blogadda where Pampers was launching a new diaper product. And guess who I found there....

My celebrity moment! :)

It was awesome to see her and be a part of an event she was hosting. I have always found her fitness inspirational!

And then arrived the creative writing workshop with Natasha Badhwar that I was really waiting for. (The parallel workshop in this slot was on video blogging) It was the most unique workshop on writing that I have ever been a part of. Like her columns, Natasha's workshop had emotions involved and she brought a new aspects of what can make us better writers. Being ok with who we are and permitting ourselves to feel the way we are were fresh and unique perspectives I gained from her workshop. 

The day was getting a bit long by now since we started at 8.30 in the morning. But the high tea was refreshing with yummy snacks to fill our bellies. The day was far from over and we had a whole lot of fun lined up! When we came back to the main hall of the conference, we had Suchitra Krishnamurthy of the Dole Dole and Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa fame. This part of the evening began with Suchitra and Natasha (Badhwar) discussing the way blogging has changed since Suchitra used it in its earlier days. It was great to hear how she leveraged online power to promote her album during the 90s. And then came the grand Blog adda awards followed by the launch of the book Game of Blogs. 

Phew! It was a long but fun day full of learning and meeting people. Looking forward to more such events in the future!