New Members' Meet

In MAC, things never die down, never stagnate. Every event links us to the next and we just, as the popular phrase suggests, “go with the flow.” It was this long chain of non-stop anime activities that gave us one of our biggest highlights that we have received as of yet, an article about MAC in the Times of India which happened to coincide with Comic Con held at the World trade centre Mumbai where MAC cosplayers  were participating.

Who knew that single well timed article in a prestigious newspaper like the Times of India could change our club so radically.  With the monumental inflow of oh-so-many new members into the club, MAC has emerged as a bigger, better and much more enthusiastic club than it has been before. The newer members have added momentum to the already galloping fun-ride called MAC. In consideration of the new blood of MAC, we decided, quite spontaneously, to have a New Members’ Meet.

So there we were discussing how 4 days is too short a notice to make an announcement for an upcoming meet. However, we took the zeal of the new members too lightly. Even with just a 4 days heads-up, we were awarded with more than 40 members turning up for the meet. This posed a serious problem – a problem unheard of by the other anime clubs of India - an overcrowding problem. The location planned was ‘Candies @Bandra’, an out of the way yet sprawling place which tends to get a bit packed on Sundays. Luckily, everything worked out in the end.

What began as a casual meet, meant just for hogging on the food, anime talks and chilling out, turned out to be a full-fledged one, complete with member introductions, registrations and the sale of fan-made anime merchandise.
 It was not just the number of the new faces that we could see at the meet which surprised us; it was the variety of them as well. The TOI article, we soon realized, had a much wider coverage than we expected – we had members as young as 13 years (who unfortunately couldn’t make it to the meet) to older, much more experienced members (who fortunately DID make it to the meet). 

Although the meet itself was not one of the longest MAC has had, it was certainly one of the noisiest. With the noise of dragging chairs and tables to accommodate everyone in a restricted public area, the cacophony specific to new friends being made, the boisterousness  of old members relating stories to the new ones, the commotion created by the people interested in the merchandise - it was a crazy pandemonium of a meet, with the only quiet members being the ones trying to sneak in food without anyone coming to know about it (their attempts were obvious failures considering MAC members can instinctively sniff out food).

Even with all the craziness in the air, or maybe because of it, we all managed to achieve the underlying aim of the meet, i.e., getting to know each other and bridging the gap between the old and new members.

Even now we are all under the rosy haze of seeing MAC’s growth in numbers as well as in activities. With such overwhelming spirit exhibited by all the MAC members, new and old, we have even greater hopes for MAC’s success. I can’t wait to see the opportunities we might have in the future, and with such a reliable and enthusiastic, not to mention huge, workforce, nothing seems impossible for us anymore.

To the bigger and better MAC, banzai!