Circa 1564, if twitter was around and if folks at Stratford-On-Avon were tech-twavvy, their local bard would have tweeted – “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him who makes it”. Mind you, it is much less than 140 characters(the twitter limit) yet conveys so much.
Fast-forward to 2009, words of wisdom such as above deserve to be re-tweeted and that is exactly what Dr. Shashi Tharoor did at the tweetup in Bangalore yesterday, taking upon him the blame of not keeping in mind the multilingual/multicultural cauldron that India is, as a result of which the now infamous cattle class controversy erupted few months back. And made Indians in multitudes flock to twitter.
Frankly speaking, in spite of being quite a twitterphile I’d never attended tweetups until the one with @GuyKawasaki last month. That was much fun but I obviously connected with this one more.
The one hour or so session, was full of quips from the wise man. He is a delight to listen to and a gem of a human being.
When asked what would he do when faced with a glass ceiling in Indian politics, he replied that he was here to serve and did not care much about the rise. He shared anecdotes of how twitter, at times, helped with social causes.
In the process, I met some amazing tweeters from Bangalore. One of them being @manuscrypts whose done a wonderful write-up on the event. Like him, I too got my copy of The Great Indian Novel autographed but unlike him I haven’t read it yet. I haven’t had the privilege(?) of interacting with politicians and if I’m not mistaken, this was my first such encounter. I’m sure that Dr. Tharoor is indeed a class apart but I’m also sure that, if other politicos have even an iota of a vision like his – India has a bright future!
Earlier at the venue, a TOI reporter had asked me why I was there. To get inspired! – I had said. And inspired I was, at the end of it.
Update
Lo and Behold! A few hours after I tweeted the link to this post, the following happened …
Tales of Yore - by a dude, a geek 
Lucky, have all of his books just waiting to get autographed
You mean you’ve read all his books? Great! 🙂
The tweetups have actually enabled a ‘metro thinking’ expressed in limited characters each . Just like the Gen X which believes in fast , furious and sleek rather than intense and verbose ; the tweets are compact and variety . It does not make our day an ‘essay’ , but ‘eventful’ .
I agree.
tharoor will do an obama in india…
Not sure what you mean by that but I hope for a better India!
By the way, ‘anaanymas’ sounds/looks really cool 🙂
The book is very nice and funny, read it, especially now after you have a signed copy.. 🙂
Yup. Been on my To-Read list for a long while now. Need to strike it off 🙂