My Cultural Past

Those were the happiest days of my life. My College days and more particularly the Cultural days.

I entered Vivekananda College without any expectations of cultural events. 'Modern School' (where I did my Senior Secondary) ironical to its name had no cultural events. It had been total opposite to the school I studied ( sorry.. Went) till class X.

Other colleges conducted culturals regularly and we received invitations.The seniors in the college selected the teams. There were no Intra College events. Some juniors did get the nod but there were no proper mechanism to select teams that would represent the college. The first year went by.

Due to my poor marks in the plus 2 board exams , I had to take B.Com Corporate Secretaryship as I did not get the B.Com General Seat. I had often heard that the BCS department in a college received step motherly treatment. It had been no different. whatever I heard was true.However there was a surprise in the second year.

In the second year , entered Mr P.C.(HOD - BCS). He brought about a real change.He organized a BCS committee. The Structure of the committee was fantastic. It consisted of a Department Secretary and various other committees headed and managed by the students themselves. I was part of the editorial committee. We were in charge of bringing out a magazine. It never happened (thanks to our swamiji - Rector of out college.)There was this organizing committee that was to organize intra department cultural events every week and it was decided that the winners were to represent the college at other cultural events.The best thing about this committee was the fact that there was a lot of interaction between the seniors and the juniors.

This was a huge success.I got my chance to represent the college at other cultural events. I still remember my first cultural appearance at Ethiraj College. It was one of their department fest. I participated in 'Crossword' and 'Debug' with Roshit and won the First and Second places respectively. I then participated at creative writing and again won the second prize. To win at my first cultural appearance gave me tremendous confidence. We came overall second at that fest with Stella Maris winning the overall trophy.

3 months later , there came another cultural event at Ethiraj. This was much bigger to the previous one. I will never forget this culturals because we won an event that we were considered to be the poorest.This was Adzap. I can never forget the cheers and applause for our rebuttal session with the judge that day.There entered Kaushik Ganesh, my junior ( who sadly discontinued college after clearing CPT)whose performance that day I can never forget.. This was the culturals which was special to me as it was where won a 'Case-Study' event with a special appreciation from the judge.

A poor season followed. I wasn't winning. The comeback of sorts happened at Madras Christian College. I came second in Stock wars. That was it. My only win for the whole semester. However our college team had become a force to reckon with for the other teams that year. We were increasingly making our presence felt. We came Second in "Deep Woods'(MCC's annual Culturals) that year losing to ethiraj by a small margin. Skit,Street play,ad designing,quiz, you name it we were there.

In the third year , I became the cultural secretary for the department.
I was to decide the teams that would represent the college.I was trying to please everyone with my choice of teams and I think I succeeded.My strategy was very simple. I would send juniors to 'Attu' college culturals such as 'MGR Janaki', 'WCC' etc and retained 'Stella Maris', 'MOP' for the seniors. Thankfully the juniors were not complaining.

On a personal front , the third year was my best. I won every competition I entered.
One of the best came at MOP Vaishnav.It was the event called 'Event Management' named as 'preba gestion'.We had to submit a plan for a Mega Indian cultural event happening outside India. We put our sincere efforts in it and created a PPT and presented it to the judges who were spellbound by it. The other teams were no match to it. We won it. It was my first win as the cultural secretary. The Judges that day were professional event managers. They gave their visiting cards to us and if interested asked us to join them in any of their projects. It was a professional performance from us.

Vismith and myself started winning consistently from then on. We won almost all paper presentation events.My juniors Karthik(JAM) and Srivatsan Hari (For any event) also started winning consistently. Nash and Mahendra were terrific actors. We used 'Amullu' to add 'glamour'.They became the mainstay for onstage events.I was part of the Adzap team not because of my 'acting' ability but for my 'Mokkais' and most importantly for the Rebuttal sessions. We were winning everything.(Coming Second among 26 participants at ethiraj in Adzap is worth mentioning). Arvind, Sunder(there were three Sundar's in my class),Kumaran and Surya won almost all art events.

We were winning alright. However the overall trophy was still eluding us though not for long.

Loyala college culturals clashed with Stella Maris's Culturals during over third year. As we had 'seen' lots of Stella Maris and bored to death, I preferred participating at Loyola. This proved to be a great strategic move. Most good teams opted for Stella for obvious reasons and gave Loyola a miss. We (being intelligent)went to Loyola.

The first day was Loyola's morning college culturals. It was a dream day for us. We won every event that we participated. It was one of 'those' days. The quiz that day was simply amazing. It was simply the best quiz contest that I had attended for a long long time (in terms of quality of questions asked ). Myself , Aravind and Vismith came first in the prelims. I almost knew all the answers that day. The Finals was thrilling to the core. We were getting it right almost.The quiz was won by Stella Girls(who gave their own culturals a miss). We came second in the thrilling last round.( thanks to Vismith's guess.. lol.. he never knew it , the answer just came out of his mouth.)

The day was even more special to me as I won one more event . The event was 'Loan sanctioning'.The timings for the quiz prelims and this event clashed. I was itching to go to quiz prelims and I volunteered myself to be the first person who would approach the 'Banker' and approach for loan. Shravan was also participating in that event. I spoke first and then ran off for quiz prelims. The results were announced in the Main Hall and I was surprised that I came first because my speech was pathetic . Even more surprised was Shravan. Honestly , that was an event I should not have won . However as luck would have it I won it.

But we did not win the overalls that day. That hurt.

The best part came the next day. It was the evening college culturals of Loyala. There were three events and then a final event . It was progressive , If we won the first event , we would move to the next event and so on. Each college team consisted of Six persons. Our team was Myself,Roshit,Vismith,Mahendra, Aravind and Shravan.

The first event was academically related. So wisely I sent Shravan and Mahendra.They won it. We progressed. The Second event was aptitude test. We sent Roshit and Vismith.They won it . We again progressed. The third event was Quiz which myself and Aravind breezed through comfortably .( unlike the previous day , the questions were dumb). The Icing on the cake was the fact that we beat the Stella team that beat us the previous day. The final event was some talking event.Vismith blabbered something and came second in that event. Three first prizes and one second prize meant we won the overalls and also a hefty cash prize and a nice trophy.We had finally won an overalls trophy beating the filthy brats from Stella.Those two days at Loyola college are unforgettable days.

Perhaps my only disappointment of being the 'Cultural Secretary' was my inability to conduct a cultural event at Viveka. It was in the final semester that I cleared PE-2 and joined articleship. I was not able to devote time and do justice to my position. I could not carry both simultaneously.No one else from my department took it seriously. It just could not happen.

I heard that the culturals were conducted this year by my juniors. I am happy that they are reaping the fruits for the seed that our team sowed.

P.S.

--> You may think after reading this post that I have been blowing trumpets about my achievements.In a way I also feel it is true.

I would like to offer my explanations.

--> I will be the last one to proclaim myself to be the greatest.
--> At most culturals I have been lucky.
--> My list of participating certificates are greater than the prize winning ones. I have lost lots and lots of events.
--> My comfort zone is being modest.I must admit I have been outside my comfort zone while posting this particular blog.

Still I blogged about it because:-

1.Those were the moments in my life I was very happy and was enjoying every bit of it.
2.Such moments have been rare.
3.I want to treasure them somewhere where I can look back and feel happy about.
5.The greatest happiness comes by Nostalgia.Its like those master card ads. PRICELESS !

P.S for P.S ->>The intentional omitting of point 4 may please be ignored.