Sunday, October 09, 2005

CET: Poovambazham!!!

I can go on and on about my CET (mis)adventures. Throughout my college days, I used to consider myself an all-in-all in the dramas and skits department. (You will understand why the time span is restricted to the college days, once you are through with this post). Bole tho, like our mega serial all-in-all Madhu Mohan. “Story, Script, Directorion and Main Actor – me myself and I” kind of stuff... I gained confidence and learned many tuff lessons from our highly successful skit “Enkilum ente Lakshman-aa!!!” at Lovely (my entrance training institute at Pala). In CET, at the end of each academic year we used to have a department celebration called Computer Night, which used to be a get-together of all the comp-sci dept students. It also doubled up as a farewell party for the senior most batch. During our third year comp-sci night, we performed a skit “www.Panchaali Swayamwaram.com”, which was well received by the audience. So my confidence levels had skyrocketed. Finally, for my passing out year, I was breaking my head over getting some fresh idea. Then my Bethany (prestigious Trivandrum hostel which had the privilege of accommodating us) friends came up with this idea - “Lets re-do the skit that was successfully screened for Bethania (well known hostel day celebration of Bethany, world famous all over Trivandrum).”

As usual, it was one of those stupid stories involving some police officers, a thief, a dead woman and some idiotic investigation involving a lot of double meaning dialogues and soft vulgarity. A batch of comedians from Bethany had performed it well for Bethania and they got enuf accolades from the MTT (nearby Ladies’ hostel, which was the primary motivating factor for all the action during Betahnia) crowd. So we were sufficiently inspired and decided to take that up as one of the items. We, the Bethany Engineers being hyperactive, were not ready to stop with just that. That was our trump card, but we had two other skits as well. The only thing I can say now is, both were equally or more advanced in vulgarity. USP of the second skit was the costume of a woman film star. We planned to make Sow wear a bra and place 2 big rubber balls in strategic locations, and top it with a short white T-Shirt with BASKETBALLS written across the chest. It was only due to the strength of our stars that we managed to escape beatings when we went shopping for the bra. Imagine two guys rushing into a shop, heading straight to a saleswoman and one of them telling her “Chechy, we need a bra, for his size” pointing the other.

Anyways, we did all the preparations. We worked a lot on our main item. Countless rehearsals at Bethany Audi. I was acting as a Police SI. Sow was the constable and KK the thief. The story line was something like me prompting KK to narrate an imaginative rape attempt on the murdered woman and stuff like that. We were pretty confident as we had already seen the skit doing well. And the plus-two kids of the hostel who had seen our rehearsal were all laughing away to glory. All of us were confident about our own acting skills as that was what enabled us to survive in our hostel and college.

Finally, the D-Day arrived. The program order was announced. Our police skit was the second or third item. Our turn came. We did all the usual post drama announcements... ”Bethany Kalakshethra proudly presents... our 132nd drama, ‘Poovambazham’ (yes, that was the goddamn name given to that skit). We are doing this on our 34th stage. For bookings, contact... etc etc...” I was the one doing the announcement from back-stage in that typical high pitch dramatic tone. The curtain was mercilessly raised before I could complete my announcement. Sow the constable was all alone on the stage in the very first scene. He was waiting with muttered curses for the SI (me) to turn up... The next thing I remember is dropping the mike and running to the stage grabbing an over-coat, which I was supposed to wear. I entered the stage trying to zip my coat. That goddamn zipper was stuck and I was pacing from one end of the stage to the other struggling to zip up my coat. I think somehow the audience understood what was going on and the cheering (read howling) started. It never stopped after that. It was being modulated depending upon our dialogues. In fact we got some appreciation for some of our stunts, but the howling was present as a background music throughout.

Actors came and went but the shouts never stopped. Sow, KK and I had to suffer it all as we three where always on the stage. At one point, it grew so loud that our voices were drowned in the mess. Then I approached the mike and made an announcement. “We are overwhelmed with your enthusiasm and encouragement. As a token of respect, we are giving you a chance to express ur feelings for the next 5 minutes. We will resume once you are done.” I think it was the first time in the history of drama that a drama was muted/paused on stage to accept crowd’s ‘acknowledgment’. All of us ‘actors’ waited on the stage itself while the crowd was howling away to glory. Just imagine students of an entire department, shouting and howling at full throat, including girls :_(, in front of all the professors and even the HOD. It almost went on for 5 mins... At last, KK grabbed the mike and made a second announcement. “No matter how long u continue this, or how loud you get, we will leave the stage ONLY when we are through”. The cacophony subsided all of a sudden; I believe the crowd appreciated our spontaneity ;_). We restarted our gimmick. We couldn’t keep the crowd silent for long... it was a repeat performance. Finally, we managed to somehow finish it off and escape successfully (safely) from the stage. Even though I could act smart on the stage, I was so embarrassed and I persuaded Bethany guys to cancel out the remaining 2 skits... I don’t think I will ever forget that onstage experience ever.

As an icing on the cake, got this rocket of a comment too.... In next day’s class, Divya ma’am was trying to be gentle when she offered this as a form of consolation “The crowd was overreacting...” I tried to make the best out of the situation “Yes ma’am.... in fact, some people who had personal grudge on us were trying to settle scores with us... that was what happened”. She gave me a pathetic look and asked, “So you guys genuinely thot it to be a good one or what?” Then as they say, my (fainted) body was ferried on the shoulders of four of my friends to the nearest medical center.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

www.Panchaali Swayamwaram.com skit koovi thalliyathu njan innum orkunnu...

Geo said...

ha ha ha

Welcome onboard buddy :_D
I knew I cud count on u to do something like this :_D

Sujith said...

now i know why comsci nites are not open to the rest of the departments. had it been, u'd've been able to improve ur own record (# of ppl 'encouraging' u ;-)).. he he..

Anonymous said...

kk-yum sowjiyum okke undaayittum oru mayavum illaaathe kooovi thakerthu... ho! thonda adichu poyirunnoonnu thonnunu annu athu koovi kooovi :))

Just happnd to come across this post of urs... And aa nite nalla orma varunnu ippol :-) Thank you :-)

Benoy :D
2003 batch

kickassso said...

Bethany hostel eh?
I live and used to study in those parts....nalanchira right?

Aashi said...

That was another good post Geo!! Truly hilarious…and very well described! I had already started imagining myself as one among the audience - hooting u !! hehe!

Geo said...

@Jithu: comsci nights are exclusive. We don’t want thugs like you to spoil the fun. Bhu ha ha ha... ;_))

@Benoy: Welcome welcome... ;_) nice to see u ppl commenting... I even got a comment from Abhi who used to be silent so far. I am sure none of the comscies present on that 2002 comsci night will ever forget our skit :_))

@Kickassso: Spot on... Nalanchira Bethany Hostel... Nice place to live, I assure you...:_)

@AF: ye to af??? :_(

-Poison- said...

hehe...the sound "kooooooo" is sooo familiar :_)

silverine said...

That was a damned funny account of your attempt to buy a bra :))

Reminded me of my college play, when we desperately hunted for hair to stick between shirt collars cos we were acting as men and we thought that would give it a touch of authenticity ROFL!!!!!!

lol post!

venus said...

better luck next time geo! your description reminded me of our annual college week, we'd have a similar end of the year program, with all funfare, and all kinds of competitions, treasure hunt etc. It lasted only for my first year, and for some reasons, the administration did not like the idea of kids enjoying this things! I am still not getting wole skit, but looks like it would have been quite hilarious. may be you should posted a video or pictures or something.
and a request to other bloggers: english translation plz

Jiby said...

i laughed so much reading this and it brought back so many memories of skits long gone by. for onam and xmas we we used to conduct skits in class and they were always well recieved. high on over-confidence, for au-fait we decided on an irreverent take on 9/11. still remember the sfi saghakkal from our college sitting with their hands on their heads totally embarassed after the skit...

our class wuz strongly pro-sfi, otherwise they wud have surely beaten the shit out of us. for every college program since then the organisers wud demand to know what we were planning to do, before letting us go on stage. engineering days were the best!

Geo said...

@-Poison-: Pls don’t remind me abt that.... I was allergic to loud noise for 2 weeks :_D

@Silverin: Thanks :_D ...Sow and me used to be the default choice for any such ‘daring’ endeavors as we were amongst the ones with the toughest of skins...

Btw, nice to know that you TOO were perfectionists. ;_)

@Venus: college festivals are source of great fun. I don’t have any of the pics with me now... I think my co-stars have one or two with them... should collect them from my friends and keep as a souvenir. :_D

@Jiby: Still remember the fun we used to have for AU-Fait... We used to cheer for our college... and unfortunately for University College Karyavattam, they were using the acronym UCK .... and we adding an F to it.... it was nice fun... Our Bethany gang was present for all the college festivals of Tvm as we had students from almost all the colleges staying in our hostel...:_)

I agree with you - engineering days were the bestest!

hope and love said...

:))
very cute post..

Rat said...

The actor/performer/joker in Geo can never be questioned.. No use questioning.. It remains an unanswered question - a mystery !
Should I write more ? The blog says it all :)

Geo said...

@HnL: You always write this 'cute cute' thing which leave me feeling like a baby... :_D
Thanks a lot :_D

@Rat: The answer to the question can very well be deduced from the question itself rather than going to the intricacies of a catastrophic juxtaposition of .... enuf rite? ;_))

BTW, your effort to put our travelogues on ur blog is commendable. Nice work....

Activity said...

through my shady past, and in my 'visible' future, i hope i'll never have to conjure up this line:
“Chechy, we need a bra, for his size”

Anonymous said...

was out for a while ;-)...
good post...
good ol days...
we did have a blast that night :)
and Divya ma'am's comment ;-)

Geo said...

@activity: It was like what they show in an old 'moods' adv. Two guys marching straight to the saleswoman and "Bra, please!!!" ;_)

@KG: Welcome back... so u've been driving around... :_D

Anonymous said...

While reading this I was reminded of mazda mpv you should stop by.

Anonymous said...

Hey .. I'm an old Bethenian too :-) Have been there for the Bethenia's in our times too.
Lively description .. ;-)