Galapagos 2012

Live blog.

Since everyone wanted a live feed of the proceedings, and a live video feed was a little beyond my resources, I decided to do the next best thing. A live blog feed. This is my first attempt, so forgive any boring parts, and cheer for the funny and interesting parts :)

Keep refreshing this page for updates...

2: 22 pm:  The prep is in full swing. People running around on stage and off it. Music is being tuned in. A lot of hubbub, the hall itself is preparing to go live, it seems. Everyone is rehearsing their roles.

The hall is nicely decorated with balloons and such. A few of them have started bursting, providing a nice background :)

As they tune the speakers and such, the hall is reverberating with extremely annoying high bass music... Since Chopade sir has already made an appearance, about half an hour ago, it seems the proceedings will begin soon. With the customary speech, I hope. And a re-hash of this famous Choto se Chulo tum song...

2:28 pm: First announcement warning people to line up backstage as they plan to start in 10 minutes. First round of heckling and trolling begins, as one groups shouts ONE MORE to that announcement...

People, as expected, have grouped themselves according to sensibilities... Sir and staff in the first few rows. the fifth and sixth years in the middle, managing the heckling. Assorted juniors clumped near the front, indistinguishable youths.. :) The non participants are then grouped towards the sides and the back.

Good to see a nice costume party of sorts, with people dressed in outlandish clothes, carrying odd contraptions :)

2:36 pm: As the buzz of "Jaldi chalu karo" fills the impatient audience, the people backstage scurrying around frantically, to get everything started. They said 1pm, it is just 1.5 hours late. Not so bad, considering the usual average.

The lights have been put off, the huge blue screen of a paused projector on stage. Poised and ready.

2:50 pm: It starts! A video of the previous  fests starts the proceedings. People cheer at appropriate times. Two juniors start the compeering, oddly, in marathi. As the video ends, The MAN walks onto stage, to start his SPEECH.

2:55 pm:  Chopade speech. Peppered with the usual Ithinkindatyounows and fraction of second i said yes and IBB is Great etc etc...

2:55 pm: Speech over in record time!!!!! just 5 min

3:00 pm:  They begin with the 1st years dance. The compeering is a bit scripted, but I guess the jokes will follow. Dance to begin now. 1st year.

3:00 pm:  Contrary to tradition, instead of the usual pooja, or ganesh vandana... we start with Its the time to disco and Qeu sera sera... Hilariously entertaining dancing! Go 1st years!! Rocking start!

3:04 pm: 3rds years bring a little marathi gondhal to the stage. Navawari saris looking good on stage!

And the guys join them for the next song... and hilarity ensues!!! hahahaha!superfun

Insane finale with a super durga pose...

3:09 pm: Brave solo dance by a second year girl... cham cham karta... she is dancing amongst the audience before going to the stage. Respect!

Light people screwing up a bit, and the audio also stopped a little. But nothing perturbs this seemingly slip of a girl. The best stage presence by a soloist I have seen in a while. Amidst weird guys in the audience, much heckling, she held her own. And a great dance to boot.

3:14 pm:  Micro dept people now karaoke-ing. Filling in Dr Chopade's shoes, I guess. Better than him though.. Two ladies, I don’t know who. hasta hua noorani chehra...

3:18 pm: Lavani. I missed who this is.. but looks good. Two full decked girls...

Its Gayatri and sneha in an encore of their performance a few years back! By encore I mean with additions of course, not a repeat.

Very nice dance this, and long! funky cameo by some juniors with a 12 waje chi bus in vajle ki bara... :)

3:30 pm: Still these two people on stage. Audio system is a bit odd, coming on in fits and starts. Hasn’t affected the composure of the girls though. they keep on dancing :)

Welcoming nikhil ajinkya and shefali to the hall. Was getting a bit bored alone. :)

It’s been a nice and awesome show till now, have to say though, the audience behaviour leaves a lot to be desired.

3:37 pm: Budding couple of IBB Archit and Aishwarya do a duet on "time of my life". Dirty dancing! Archit is way past his dhoom days, Swazye-ing it with ease! lifts and all!

3:41 pm: A gaggle of third year girls doing a funky western number...

Extremely on the edge performance. Wink wink. Gotta see chopade sir's expression on this one! surely priceless! I half expect him to step up and stop this thing right now!

3:45 pm:  Its hardik kakkad purushottam chetan et al on stage! this is the current senior most batch.... oops almost forgot vinay nair, sumit and vaibhav... the girls yet to come on stage...

girls come...

extremely awesome song selection... tan tanan tan tan taara chalti hain kya nau se bara, unchi hain blding, jungle hain adhi raat hain. mujshe shaadi karogi. ekdum sallu khan etc. :)

best entertainer so far, insane song selection!

4:00 pm: and immediately, we have a play by the 4th years. ""kyunki X bhi kabhi girlfriend thi...

a play on the relationships between mismatched couples. Very intelligent and funny ideas they have, only the continuity is a little something they could have worked on more. But very nice play...

3:56 pm: 2nd year girls. Chikni chameli-esque songs. big group on stage, lots of energy! lotsa audience support too...

4:14 pm: 4th years now chammak challo-ing...

brilliantly coordinated dance. best performance so far

superlative performance...though the glaring absence of chandana was felt throughout. lets hope she has a solo performance later...

4:26 pm: faculty dance... and guess what the setting chakka shivaji maharaj enters and the faculty performs for him!!! and the maharaj is none other than Praveen sir himself! nikhil and ajinkya provide the flag waving... nice co-ordinated lezhim by the ladies of IBB. good performance

4:35 pm:  a music performance by the second years/ a guy with a guitar and another with a small bongo. lets see what they do. an instant cheer from their section of the crowd went up as they entered. popular people these...

a mixed version of hotel california. good music, but the voice is a bit odd. luckily, the mike levels are low, so the focus is on his music...

long gaps in between. if I may say so myself, the hosting could have been a bit better. Its not bad, just that there are biggish gaps in between.

internet is conking off. I will keep track of the events and provide a summary later. ciao!

11:30 pm: Finally home, normal internet service resumed. So, the evening. It was a mixed bag really, some really awesome things and some a bit off.

Le me begin with some things I didn’t like. The whole show was a bit disconnected to each other. There was no acknowledgement of the performance before, and while the audience was clapping, the announcement of the next performance was already done. May be you needed that to get the 30 odd performances done on time. But thats not the biggest complaint I had. For some reason, there were a couple of songs sung in between. One was a classical performance. I thought he sung swimmingly well, but it was out of place, wedged in between a couple of dances. If they had started the show with this classical singing, maybe it would have been cooler. The other singing performance was plain bad. We had to say "bas karo" and stop them from singing more songs, and they had already sung quite a few. There wasn’t a hint of sur or taal, and it was quite ordinary. What it also did was mask the good guitar player who was accompanying them! when he did a solo later, we were all impressed. Also, the prize distribution was a bit funny, what with many phd students and junior faculty sitting in the audience as the organisers themselves handing out the prizes [with pats on the backs to the winners to boot!].

That done, let me list out the larger list of things I liked!

In the vein of the nice guitar player, there was also a flute soloist, who was so good, me and shefali kept saying "Ha manus firodiya chya weles ka navata!" :)

The hostel dances at the end provided a very high energy finale to the whole event. That exemplifies the idea of Galapagos as I see it. It isn't about organizing a fest. Not to brag, but we have done it twice, and frankly, it was one of the easiest things I have ever done. Nothing much to it. It isn’t about the performance itself. It is about the effort and enthusiasm and spirit behind the performance. Hostel dances aren't known for their quality. But they do have a lot of energy and spirit, and we all love them.

The effort part was evident in all the performances by the 4th year batch, the one with chandana, sumer, abhijeet, pradumnya, devashree etc. All their performances were really good. After the break, there were just two.

Archit devashree and chandana did a mixed dance. We all know these three can dance. And boy did they dance! excellent co-ordination, and a very god quality dance.

Their batch did a play based on the Firodiya winning play by SIT, "back to school". This play had a lot of complicated elements. Showing the flashback successfully. carrying out the many one liners in the play to perfection, getting out all the punches. They comic [and complex] element of the three bullies doing everything in sync. etc etc. I was afraid, it was an easy to play to botch.

Let me tell you, they didn’t disappoint A BIT. The play was, in a word, KADAK. Excellent acting. The leads were comfortable,  the best friend consummate. Pradumnya, as the comic relief, was the star I felt. They adapted the story well, to suit the IBB background. well taken punches. All in all, the highlight of the day.

With that, I concluded my semi-live coverage of the fest. All in all, it was an evening well spent. the event had a few mishaps, but then this article has so many punctuation errors too! :) I loved the creativity and enthusiasm of the current crop of IBBians, and leave with the fond hope, that like us, they too try their hand at some things outside of the University, and taste the sweet nectar of high profile exposure.

p.s. : you can stop refreshing the page now... :P

Mumbai: Urbs prima Indiae

After agonising for 10 minutes on the title, I have settled on a simple [Orhan Pamuk-esque] title. During a recent trip to Mumbai, I had the opportunity to explore the ins and outs of Fort and CST on foot and via BEST. I had tons of fun and some nice moments. Lets see what. 

So, It was the wedding of a school friend of mine. We hadnt met in 7-8 years since 10th, but such is the school-friend phenomenon, that you pick up the threads as you left them, even with such humongous gaps in between. Quick description: 

Left for Pune on saturday, attended his Ring Ceremony, at Mahape [near Koparkhairane, New Bombay]. Came back on Sunday morning [more like afternoon] to attend the wedding of The Devika. Had fun there too, a nice little sojourn to Chocolate Room with a bunch of friends, and loads of juicy IISER gossip. :) 

Saturday evening back to Mahape, to attend the reception [the wedding had taken place in the day]. As the groom left for the venue, we took it upon ourselves to decorate the bridal chamber. It was fun, trying to think of innovative ways of arranging flowers to make it look elegant :) . We wanted to seal the deal with candles, but the hotel literally snuffed out our idea by saying no fire in the room as it triggers the fire alarms. So we had to make do with flowers and a nice little cherry cheese-cake. 

I went to CST the next morning, to meet a friend, who promptly stood me up. Waiting for another friend, a fellow wedding-attendee, I started roaming about the nice old buildings of CST. This friend was at Borivali, and 2 hours turned to 8 and I had 23 tons of time on my hands. It was fun though, I was in no particular hurry, and I had a whale of a time, roaming around aimlessly, soaking it in. 

There are plenty of buses that do the CST-Nariman Point-CST circuit. All I had to do was hop onto a double decker, and sit myself down on the first seat on the top and have a nice sight-seeing tour. Turned out, a couple had hogged the front row, both sitting one each on the 2 front benches. As the bus was virtually empty, out of courtesy, I had to sit on the second row. Best 10 minutes of my day! As you can imagine, I sat behind the girl. There is a window on these seats, where the windshield would be. As I sat behind her, the wind wafted through these windows and through her, hair all flowing and nice, into me. A sweet, fragrant time... Take a second to imagine this situation and realize how awesome it was :)

[was thinking of putting this photo here, but it doesn't cover it, and such things are best left to imagination.]

As I look back, I see that the entire day could be typified by this one moment. I could soak in the beauty of the surroundings, virtually as an outsider. But in the end, she got down with her boyfriend, oblivious to my presence. I didnt mind it though! The moment was good enough. As I roamed about the streets of Fort, I could see and observe many things. Mostly the intersection of the very old and the hip and young. The city itself, or the people, were oblivious to this soaking in of mine though. They were engrossed in their own loves. 

If I try to describe the city in one overarching theme, I would fail. By city I mean just Fort, but still. It is like the neo-colonial architecture in the area. A hodge podge of many different styles. Gothic pillars, English decorations, Islamic onion domes, Parsi symbolism, Indian materials, Brit-Raj architecture etc etc etc. A hodge podge, true, but not a mess. What emerged was neither of its components. They didnt just merge seamlessly, they melted together to forge a new style. Thats the flavour of that area. Yet, it is not too. Do not try to reconcile this paradox, coz it is there, like a living, breathing thing and you cant explain it away. Metres away from the Taj, we have a poor kid selling fruit slices for 2 rupees a slice. Just below the financial nerve centre of the country, the RBI HQ, are two guys selling Vada Pav and Chai. Just outside some of the oldest buildings in the country, you see some of the most forward thinking kids to ever set foot inside a college. All this created even more hodge podginess. But again, there was the total absence of incompatibility. Every niche was occupied, every opportunity utilized, to present a seamless facade.  Every element was just that, in its element. Everywhere, again and again, there was this feeling, that my being there or not being there was not making one iota of a difference. Some places engulf you, some entertain you, some demand entrance qualifications. Mumbai did nothing of the sort. It just didnt care, you come and you go, we have enough of our own cares to worry about...

There was a road, so small that only one car could pass through at once. It was small because there were cars parked parallel on both sides of the road. In such a small space, I found the longest sedan I have ever seen. 

This Chrysler Fleetwood is LONG. If it doesnt seem so long in the pic, here is a telling observation. There was a Honda Accord parked beside it. To my [admittedly excited] eyes, it seemed to be atleast 1.5 times the length of the Accord! It was a maroon car, lovingly preserved, spotlessly shiny. The interiors were a nice suede leather, plush seats. Not enough room inside it seemed, for such a huge boot, but there it was. Almost exactly as new, except for the stolen chrysler symbol on the front. 

Jostling for eye and leg space, were a multitude of shops. All those old building bearing this attack on their frontage with a stiff upper lip. Most of the windows above level 1 were closed or broken. As the light declined into twilight, most of the windows were dark too. I was insanely curious to go up and see what is inside. Were there actual rooms, or was the facade of the building just painted on? It was that lifeless. But not in a bad way, you know. It wasnt forbidding, not abandoned, just out of reach... There were a few beacons of lights dotting the windows here and there, to show that yes, there was life in them. Not like the the forbidding gates of Mordor, but equally inaccessible. 

These buildings were decades old. All those years of the sea breeze coupled with a fierce monsoon had failed to make a significant dent, but the softening around the edges gave them character. Worn out, but still quite unused. everything smacked of paradoxes. 

On a previous visit to this area, with Santosh, Yatindra and Yoga, we had chanced upon a nice little burger place, Fidos. It has since closed down, but every time I come here, I try to find another place like this. A previous hunt with Swetha in tow brought us the amazing Mad Over Donuts. This time though, I had no such luck. After a while, after much searching, I gave up. I decided to get lost. It was slightly difficult, as the roads are quite intuitively laid out and signboards are a-plenty. I did manage to lose myself, and one of favourite Beatles songs came to mind.... 

Magic feeling indeed. 

After a while, I got tired [and however comfortable clothes you wear, chafing is unavoidable after walking for 4-5 hours with a bag on your back...] and decided to go back to the bus trips. As dusk fell, I could see many kid-parent jodis wend their way back to bus stands and into buses to CST to go back home. The faces of an excited kid after a day at the Gateway, quietly enjoying their icecreams as worried dads held the the other hand to make sure the kid doesnt get lost way told the entire story. 

I made two more bus trips before my friend finally turned up and we made our merry way back to Pune. All my euphoria and exertions coalesced into a nice feel-good feeling, on the way back [quite like the icecream-kids]... on the back of which I am writing this whole thing. Many more things to write, many more thoughts, but right now, this is what springs to mind...