Everything that could go wrong with this meetup went wrong.

And then some more.

TwoXTopia turned one on 8th October. I decided to combine our anniversary celebration with Halloween.

The name came immediately to me
"Witches Vs Patriarchy"

Now I imagined a big room, ramp walks and women dressed as actual characters rather than just showing up in black.

And we initially discussed 100 attendees. I brought that down to 24.

100 seemed unrealistic, expensive and frankly, exhausting to organise.

Besides, I prefer smaller meetups where everyone gets to interact with everyone else.

And then the planning began.

Or rather, the disasters began.

1.We booked the wrong room.

@Greesa and I visited the venue a month in advance. We imagined exactly how the event would go. Where everyone would sit, where the food would be, where the stalls would go.

Except we'd booked the smaller gallery room, not the big hall.

We discovered this 10 days before the event, when we finally read the booking email properly.

Turns out both of us cannot read.

2.Our content calendar went for a vacation.

We had planned seven creatives, one every day in the final week.

But two of our team members were away for Durga Puja. And when they returned, @Mali fell sick like there was no tomorrow. Quite literally.

So @Vyoma_Mehta and I, two developers with absolutely no content-creation responsibilities in our job descriptions, decided to make two reels ourselves.

We gave ourselves one hour. It took two and a half.

The printer wasn't working, so Greesa had to handwrite everything we needed for the shoot.

Mali eventually came in for a half-day despite being sick, shot the main group reel and got it uploaded the same day, dropped the metaphorical mic and dipped out!

Everyone was trying to make things work with whatever time and energy they had.

3.Two days before the event, we had FOUR paid attendees.

Four.

I had already accepted that 24 wasn't happening. I was hoping we'd somehow reach 12.

Reddit was pretty much the only channel bringing registrations. I kept posting, commenting and DMing people. I even got marked as spam on Instagram for commenting too much, lol.

We eventually sold 9 tickets.

One attendee couldn't make it because she'd injured her ankle while running a marathon that very day.

Girl. A MARATHON? On event day? 😭

4.The event started without the team.

I wanted to reach by 2 PM. I forgot the microphones, had to go back and eventually arrived at 2:30.

The event was supposed to start at 3.

The team arrived after 4.

So for an entire hour, it was four attendees and me.

Having organised 16 meetups before this, I wasn't particularly worried about keeping people entertained. I talked to them, let them talk among themselves, rearranged tables because of the heat, coordinated with the venue and food staff, and got the cookies delivered.

I even told the attendees to clap sarcastically when the team finally arrived. Just wanted to mess with them a little.

At this point, I had accepted that things were going to go wrong and I'd just have to manage.

And then, finally, the actual event happened.

We played introduction games, Never Have I Ever, shared our most unhinged feminist takes and performed our little ritual to burn patriarchy.

Everyone wrote down something patriarchy tells them to do (or not do), read it aloud, discussed it and then burned the paper.

The opinions included men needing to prove they could be good parents via plants and pets before anyone considered reversing their vasectomies.

Casual Halloween conversation, lol.

I'd imagined everyone arriving as different characters.

Greesa came as Brad Pitt from Fight Club. I came as Wanda from the MCU.

Everyone else came in black.

One attendee declared herself Morticia Addams, then decided that everyone else in black was also a different version of Morticia Addams.

Honestly, fair. Very Morticia Addams of her!

At one point, everyone was chatting so happily that I stopped directing the room and was checking my phone to talk to my team discreetly.

Suddenly, everyone turned towards me.

They were done chatting and wanted me to tell them what happened next.

Apparently, I'd trained them well 😂

We wrapped up at 7:30. People stayed back, clicked pictures and chatted until 8.

Most of them were attending their first Halloween meetup. They felt comfortable, enjoyed themselves and wanted to come to more TwoXTopia events.

And that, honestly, made me happy.

Now for the not-so-happy part. The dark side behind everything that looks pretty

We planned for 24 and got 8 attendees.

We recovered only about a third of what we spent.

The Diwali holidays, people travelling, and the fact that 31st October was a working Saturday for some made things difficult.

But we did it anyway.

The team was happy because we'd prepared ourselves for just four attendees.

And I was relieved. Exhausted, but relieved.

Here's something I've learned from organising these meetups:

Building something isn't just about having a great idea, making a plan and watching it succeed.

It's about the venue that doesn't pick up your calls, the printer that refuses to cooperate, the reels you end up shooting yourself, the wrong stationery, the late arrivals, the unexpected expenses and all the little things nobody sees.

It's also about showing up when the numbers don't look promising.

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.

And sometimes you spend a month planning an event, recover only a third of your costs, but still give eight women an evening they want to experience again.

Would we organise another one?

Yes.

Apparently, we haven't learned our lesson yet. It's either go big or go home. And our homes are far away from this city.