The minute the snowstorm warning was announced in Boston, I knew yesterday’s meetup would be a lonely affair. There’s only so much trudging through premature darkness and freezing slush in breathable nylon mesh sneakers one can ask of people from tropical climes. At least we were on track to make history — the first big desi blog meetup to be snowed out.

Even management wasn’t immune. The day before, I’d walked in to inquire about their schedule. At 3 in the afternoon, a solitary uncle was taking a snooze, his white sneakers propped up on a chair in the darkened room, his sleepy voice grumbling, ‘Kaun hai? (Who is it?)’

Namaskar suffered from the usual problem with coming in on the tail end of an Indian buffet: the food was cold. The sambar tasted more like minestrone rather than the toor and imli style I’m used to; the saag paneer was frigid, and the paneer cubes tasteless and inert, though statin-like in their greaselessness. The side dishes partly redeemed the restaurant: Kashmiri chawal with kishmish was tasty, the chhole were decent, the kheer was excellent, the masala chai with laichi divine.

After lunch, I moved down the street to Diesel, one of the megacafes around which every great city’s intellectual life revolves. Adams Morgan has Tryst, Brooklyn has Tea Lounge, and Cambridge has Diesel, another communal living room. Writers and grad students camp out there all day on overstuffed couches, coffee and wine in a pierced-and-inked hood where cafés’ low revenues and table turns are still viable.

Nearly two hours later, as I was finishing the paper and heading out to see Juno, UB reader Rahul turned up, proving Indians’ melanin clocks congenitally run on IST. And the meetup was on. We talked about blog performance, network caching, the nearest Bollywood theaters, why Mani Ratnam is a classicist, whether Christopher Doyle or Wong Kar-Wai deserves more credit for their visual design, and I was reminded of why I love arguing with polymaths in the first place.