The Fest (LXV)

Reviewed by Lakshminarasimhan.

We enjoyed the evening profusely. The entire audience was standing throughout the show, dancing, cheering and applauding. Every one of us would have lost enough calories we would loose in a week in just hours, yet we never felt tired.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Guys were dancing like hell on the ground rising mud to fill the entire atmosphere. Pranksters were throwing water bottles open amongst the audience, splashing water everywhere. The three top class singers of the age of South India rocked the show.

One of our seniors had suggested that, we let our college singers to sing one or two songs with the maestros. That did encourage our college singers, and in no way this affected the quality of the show. The overflowing crowd had overwhelming enthusiasm throughout the evening.

As an honorary recognition our college president, vice president, cul-sec and other key people of the college committee were invited on stage at the end of the show. I, Anu and everyone who burdened themselves for the event joined them on stage. It was a memorable day of our lives. President complimented Shantanu, the cul-sec, for his efforts in arranging such an enjoyable event.

It was already 10PM, and our warden ma’am was driving us back to our hostel. I could see the glitter in Shantanu’s eyes. The feeling of self satisfaction filled us. We kept talking about the evening in our hostel even after mid-night.

The next day I met Shantanu. He was happy, nevertheless he felt bad about not being able to bring in ARR. Days of struggle, and finally the college authorities trusting in Shantanu’s way of handling funds agreed for tickets for the event, all to hear from Rahman’s manager that he had given dates to some other program. Finally our college committee did the best they could do with the funds and the ticket money.

There was enough support from the entire college for all the efforts taken by the committee. We sold out all the 500 tickets of 3 classes in just 3days. Out of request we had to go for more tickets, and remodel the seating arrangements of the gallery to accommodate all our college students and the 1000 outsiders.

The classes were suspended for all 3 days of the fest. People would be playing songs during the day in large speakers that covered the entire campus, and the colorful events like the concert, singing competitions and choreo-night were reserved for the evenings.

The most intriguing thing about the day’s proceedings was the song dedication. Before playing a song, the song will be dedicated by some X to some Y, the X used to be the boy and Y obviously his crush, and at times vice versa.

It was not necessary that the song was actually dedicated by X to Y, but people just used to say that X dedicates so and so song to Y. It was funny that X would run to the audio systems tent, when his name was heard in the speakers.

They don’t just say it as ‘X dedicates Addicted Song to Y’, but they used to say, ‘X loves her so much. X’s heart sings serenade for her. This song is one such serenade, which X will cherish for his entire life in her memory. This song, Enrique's, Baby I'm addicted, is dedicated to X’s lady love Y.” As there were these introduction lines there would be some time before Y was mentioned. So X would usually sprint to stop them before they say Y’s name.

Just when I was thinking about ‘How good it would be if someone dedicated a song with X as Shantanu’, I heard the speakers blare. “You all know of our Cognizant Cul-sec, who made this event a grant success. This song ‘Kadal Virus Ondru’ is dedicated to the love virus that has crashed his heart. Hope you know who that virus is..” before he could complete, there was a loud cheer “MICROSOFT”. I felt a bit embarrassed, and not to mention of super shy Shantanu. He hid himself in some building for the next few hours.

I was short listed for the singing competition like the previous year. Apart from my Carnatic Music training for years, the help from my seniors in the Students Arts Club (SAC) helped a lot to improvise myself. I had developed the habit of singing with the necessary phonations, whenever I felt like singing.

I lost to make it up to the top 3 places last year. Shantanu pointed out that, I sang something too technical i.e. some song that didn’t reach the masses. So this time I choose a song from a list of songs recommended by Shantanu, in spite of him not having the slightest knowledge about singing.

I sang the song Tere Ore, from Singh is King, without giving any thought about winning. I just sang the song addressing every line to Shantanu with love, and I ended up with a big round of applause from the audience. I felt satisfied. I achieved the true purpose of art to make people happy, whether or not I did better than others. I got 3rd place, and both the 1st and 2nd place went to people, who got better cheering than mine. I understood the meaning of life. Rather than evaluating something with technical stereotypes, go by the audience’s judgment, simply put ‘Customers verdict’ in Shantanu’s terms.

Days passed by, we grew closer and closer. I felt like living in a family with me, Shantanu and my sister in laws; yes Anu, Divya and all my close buddies started calling Shantanu as ‘anna’ (elder brother). Classes started getting collegic in the sixth semester.

Shantanu got better at academics. May be he got influenced by me or by AP ma’am, who handled Networks in our 5th sem. He told me that he really got interested in those two subjects because of the exceptional faculty who made him feel the subject. I felt happy that, he started caring about academics regardless of the reason.

Now that the fest and the symposium were over, we were back to hard core academics. With the placements in our range of sight, everyone started dreaming as well as fearing about their dream companies. I was myself engulfed into the Microsoft Mania.