CET: Dhwani 2002

My last post was about me getting ‘appreciated’ on stage. This one is about a role reversal. It was during our final year Dhwani, ie Dhwani 2002. Dhwani is the annual All India Cultural Festival organized by CET with student participation from all over the country. Don’t think its my claim... ;_) Thats what the students union claims. Since funds allocated by college authorities are limited, marketing committee of organizers goes to each and every shop and organization of Trivandrum for sponsorship and fund raising. When the organizing committee members approach shop owners, their promises are sky high... “Sir, all India festival sir... you know, 5 colleges from Jammu & Kashmir have already registered. 3 from Ladakh have asked for the information brochure. Sure to have at-least 10000 students viewing your advertising banner...one banner just 2000 Indian dollars sir”. One matrimonial agency agreed to sponsor a major chunk of the expenses if we managed to give them 500 matrimonial resumes of nubile engineer nymphets. That was when the engineering creativity was let loose and all of us were religiously filling printed resume forms with details of imaginary girls.

Name:	Komalam
Mother’s Name:	Shyaamala
Father:	Dhrudharaashtrar
Brother:	Dhrishtyadhrumman

How many students and colleges actually turn up for the fest is left to your imagination. I still remember the 2-member squad from some Andhra college being received with great zeal and abundant hospitality, as it added one more precious ‘state’ to the participating list. Unfortunately, the duo was from opposite sexes and they happened to be soul mates. They were more interested in having a trip and some nice time together at their college’s expense (?), away from the spying eyes of their kith and kin, than the actual All India Cultural Festival itself. More often than not, the organizing committee had to pull both of them out of the acacia forests when it was time for registration or events.

Since none of us MIyers was connected with any of the organizing committees, all of us were always present among the audience. Even the laziest of the lot Thally and Thoma turned up regularly, as it was our final year at college. Since it was a festival hosted by our college, we could not participate in any of the events. (as if all of us would have participated had it been the other way ;_D). So there we were, amongst the crowd, planning for the next mischief. Somebody announced from the stage that there would be a prize for the best cheering squad. As soon as he stopped, we started, “Bolo...booloo.. CET key..JAIIII”... It got decent response, as there were many other CETians around us with nothing else to do. And the crowd had started moving. The organizers realized this would be one-sided... Thus came the next announcement. “No prize for the host college”. As soon as he finished with that announcement, we MIyers started “Bolo...booolooooo.... IIT Kharag-poooooooooor keeeey......” Man! it was just awesome... the response we got for that was too good... So, that became our pseudonym. All of us started cheering for IIT Kharagpoooor...

Then we went on doing the stuff we always like doing... Since none of us was going on stage, we started commenting, howling, hooting and doing all sorts of weird stuff you can think of doing, sitting in the audience. May be the curses of somebody on stage that day had its impact during my comsci night skit :_(. There was some sort of a Mr and Miss Dhwani competition and a panel of judges interviewed each contestant on stage. Each contestant had multiple rounds of questions. Before the contestant could come-up with his/her answer, we were there, shouting out the funniest answers that crossed our mind. The only recognition we thrived for was approving giggles from the girls’ groups, and we got that in plenty. In fact, for better audibility, our junior Civil girls’ gang even relocated to our vicinity. For us, it was a sweeter reward than a state award, as Civil is usually the most colorful batch of the college, closely followed by Electircals. Except for one from REC Calicut, all the male contestants were good for nothing. They were making fools of themselves on stage. There were questions like “What turns you on?”. An idiot answered ‘a switch’. I do not know what he meant by that. A poor girl answered “Chocolates and friends”. The judges and the audience had a real kill “So the sight of a chocolate bar turns you on!!! is it more with friends or less with friends???”

A classmate of us was suddenly missing from our gang. Somebody spotted him some three or four rows away, chatting away to glory with a junior girl. He had drifted away from us to have a nice time with the girl. We started shouting at him from our place asking him to come back... Each of us had his/her own contribution. “Da, please come back, Sheela, Rani, Uma and all are waiting for you here...” “Is this the same girl who hit you with her sandal yesterday?” “Dad and brothers of Leena are looking for you to thrash you...” and other such stuff... Our friend got damn irritated, but he decided he would not fall prey to such cheap tricks... He decided to continue chatting with the girl. One of us approached the song dedication counter and dedicated a dummy message and song for him.... Dedication was something like, “To so-and-so... Chettaa, yesterday you forgot your watch and chain at my place, yours, Karyavattam Kochammini” (To the uninitiated, usually proses of each area append name of the place to their-own name for publicity sake. Here Karyavattam is an area very close to where our college is situated) And there was a matching song to go with that :_D. Our hero came back to our gang with folded hands and a covered head. :_)

While on dedications, we used to have other funny dedications also. We used to collect money from all the gals present (when it comes to spending money for any common cause, its the girls who act as world banks), and dedicate stuff like “Next song is dedicated to Path Finder, for its successful journey.” The fight between our final year representative (Y. Rep) and our union general secretary (G.Sec) was famous. G.Sec had a crush on one of the Civil girls of our batch. She was famous for her feminist ideas and altercations with the G.Sec. Lets call her Miss. G for the time being. For each and every college function, our Y. Rep used to approach the dedication counter somehow and give a dedication which goes like “The very first dedication goes from our G. Sec to Miss. G. Message is ‘you are my everything’. Song is ‘Why did you fall in love...’” This used to be a regular event and we used to laugh our butts off seeing that desperate look on our G.Sec’s face. The sight of our Y. Rep running for his dear life with the G. Sec and Miss. G chasing him closely was so common those days.

During fashion shows and choreo-videos, I was always present next to the stage, with my camera, to get some close-up snaps... Some of my friends tried to spread a rumor that I was trying to ogle at the girls from point blank range, and that the camera was just pretence. Nevertheless, the public out-rightly rejected that too, like many other baseless allegations against me :_). Anyways I have some pics for proof. Hope you will discount the fact that some of the pics are a bit hazy.... You know, when u follow fast moving steps, sometimes the clarity of your photo gets affected. ;_D