The Independence Day @ SPJIMR

14^th august. Dr. Luiz DaSilva’s first day of contact session. 9am... Sid and Su had made arrangements for the posters (about the Virginia Tech contact session) to pop up at all the vantage points including the 'B mile' notice board (Bistro mile - walkway leading to the bistro). The day before that Sid, Su and I sat for a poster review. What was supposed to be a 5 minute review, update, save to pen drive and dash to royal Xerox itinerary, turned out to be an hour long session. Mumbai baarish notwithstanding, we ran to Andheri station…hurriedly crossed the bridge and walked into royal xerox. Now this is a pigeon hole of a photocopy, printing, designing and publishing dukaan. Well, not that you could expect more real estate for a photocopy enterprise in Mumbai.

The open book-open lappy quiz at 1.30pm was bit of a learning curve and was fun. Dr. DaSilva’s class ended at 5pm. It was pizza time at bistro. No sooner had we silently polished off pizza, vada pav and samosa, Pallavi joined us and told us about the rehearsals going on in GW 2. This was for the morrow’s cultural program. She did a good job of convincing us. Soham, Su, Moon and I walked up the flight of stairs.

At the far end of GW2, Shek (Ranjan) and Rohit were singing to glory behind what looked like a massive piano waiting to grow up…it was the synthesizer actually. Nishant was effortlessly getting his chord right. Adi was on the acoustic guitar. Zoshi was busy practicing ‘raghupati raghava raja ram’. Couple of paces from there, RJ and Sai were busy crafting a brilliant feminine silhouette in a tricolor logo. Saurabh was back with FlickPic posters and carried a festive zeal. Pan to the center of the hall…There was a motley group of 3 or 4…Maulik, Sonia, Rakesh and Javed. Tarun and Chandan joined soon. Shireen and Sonal were choreographing the theme dance. They both are wonderfully talented dancers. What more, they can even infuse synchronization into a willing group of dancers. We joined the party.

Javed, Subir and I had the quintessential negative role…that of stoking communal hatred. After bharariYummy-Yam, the mould is cast. The angels of peace (read Shireen and Sonal) lift the pall of gloom and make good Samaritans out of us. We run with saffron, white and green pieces of satin cloth while Shireen and Sonal make the chakra with blue satin cloth prop. Umpteen number of rehearsals and improvisations, we seem to get it right. Everybody is dead tired. We call it a day and plan to meet at 8am next morning. Slept like a log of wood.

15^th August. SPJIMR campus wore a festive look. The blush of the saffron, the tranquil of the white and the verdant green were everywhere - paper flags, flowers and those lovely kurtas. National flag was hoisted at 8.30 a.m. The cultural program started pretty soon in the audi. PGP guys started off with poetry recital and patriotic songs. PGPX staged a street play called ‘Mumbai meri jaan’…a thought provoking one at that. The way the actors translated the local train and Mumbai street scenes onto the stage medium with little or no props was amazing. We, PGDSM MIT, had kept the best for the last. Shek, Rohit and Zoshi gave mellifluous rendition of patriotic songs while we alloyed the dance-drama into the songs. The finale was when we made the flag formation with satin cloth props. The audience gave us a resounding applause. Two sounds were very clear for PGDSM MIT. One was a pat on the back. The other was a gentle push showing us more sky. CultCom, take a bow!

c u soon,
Ganga