The Second Kolkata Anime Club Meet

Date: 29th Jan, 2011.
Location: Reetam's house, Garia.


The 2nd KAC meet was a sure, if small step ahead of the 1st KAC meet. my exams were getting over at the end of the month, and I gladly offered my home in Kolkata as the venue of the meet.

The meet was kept on a Saturday (which was more of an exception than the rule, and none of us now remember the reason behind it being so). The first person to arrive was ADG (which would go on to be more of a rule than an exception), and he and I spent a decent amount of time discussing anime and doing a bit of trading too (we did, right?). Next to come down was Nia and Abhishek Jain, and this tiny group of 4 made the most of my cozy (if tiny) room as we chatted about anime, ordered food to eat and did timepass in general.

The wall with the Anime Posters

 

Kaushik, Abhisheks Dasgupta and Jain

 I had invited over one of the oldest otakus I know, Rajdeep, who is in his thirties and watches anime with his kid nowadays :D
he came down sometime in the afternoon (though he could not stay for long), and with the arrival of Kaushik shortly afterwards we continued digging into the food.  After Rajdeep left, we realised that the other members who were supposed to turn up shall be (very) late and decided to start with the screenings. We watched Twilight Q (Episode 1), and then continued watching funny anime amvs which I had downloaded exclusively for the occasion till the time the others arrived. It was more like my house was attacked by the gang comprising of the Mullick siblings Ayanti, Aditi and Pratyay, and Sayanee who had tagged along with them. Nia had been waiting around to greet them, and left soon after they arrived. We continued with our screenings, and La masion en petite cubes and Kigeki -comedy were among the anime screened.

Yep, everyone seemed to like them posters  

Not sure what Kaushik is staring at

The screenings over, we continued chatting till it was evening. I tried to impress them with my guitar skills, and much to my relief, they did look impressed with the very ordinary and brief performance that I put up. It was then time for photosessions (which was to become yet another custom, something done before the completion of most meets) and the members posed with each other, with my guitar and with the anime posters I had decked up my room with :)

 

One of many group photos

The KAC mascot with the guitar

It was dark when we left. The meet unofficially continued till i had seen them all off to the main road. It was a small meet (if you count numbers) and it was not very organised either. But it was definitely fun for me (and for the others who attended), and would give members the confidence to arrange for meets on their own in the future and the desire to attend them too, irrespective of which corner of the city it is to be held at....

Kaushik, ADG, AJ and Reetam

Ayanti, Sayanee, Aditi and Pratyay

Minutes from the Meet:

• Nia had decided that she would not give a green signal for the meet till she had checked out the venue herself. I was extremely relieved when she okayed it :)
• I had decked up my room with posters only the day before the meet, because it otherwise seemed too bare. The room still looks the same, even though some of the posters have been replaced.
• Nia had brought hand drawn posters for some of us. It was the first time that we were exposed to her awesome talent as an artist.
• My guitar was almost as tall as Pratyay, though our KAC mascot looked awesome with it on.
• Though the official number of attendees was 10, at no point of time were there 10 people together. The maximum was 9, for roughly 5 minutes before Nia left.
• Aditi floored us with her AMV making skills. She had brought along some of her AMVs for the screening and we really enjoyed it a lot. 
  
• There is only one picture of Nia from the meet. But she looks so scary in that that I would probably get killed if I uploaded it here.