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

Flickpic - mooh pe smile daal

It is like catching some fresh air in a bottle and closing the lid. You would have observed in your morning walks that you can feel your lungs when you take in fresh air..ahem, I have not seen many sunrises myself. Actually, the last time I saw a sunrise was in Kanyakumari 2 years ago. The last time I saw a sunset was a year and half ago…at Haji Ali. Working at Central European Time has its downsides, you know. Back to the bottle now. This blog is an attempt to bottle such fresh air. Guess it will feel good later to open the lid once in a while to get a whiff of pure air.

The occasion was the launch of ‘FLICKPIC’ movie club. This is an initiative from apna PGDSM-MIT INFRACOM. It is a well thought out name for the movie club. In fact it is a good idea to submit this service/name idea in the marketing assignment that is due tomorrow! But there is a team of 8 entrepreneurial people…Manas Western Winds, Rahul RJ45, Navneet, Sonaal, Pradeep Baldi, Ankur Zoshi, Amit Kumar and Nitin Kumar who own the patent for it and rightly so. FlickPic is the fruit of the collective enthu and creativity of these InfraCommers.

4pm. O.R group work done. Time to down dip chaai. Some of my journo classmates tell me that the latest buzzword is ‘double chaai’, though. Not a chance. We made a beeline to the audi instead. The curiosity and excitement were palpable. If we had a popcorn stall in front of audi, we could have made enough dough to wash off water issues in girls hostel..heheeee. If wishes were caramel and cheese…yummy. Prof. Sunil Rai, Prof. Aditi, Prof. Mona, Prof. Nikhil Agarwal graced the occasion. Lakshmi M’am, Dipali M’am and Vanita M’am joined us soon.

Navneet, as cheerful as ever, welcomed the gathering and requested Prof. Rai to speak a few words. Prof. Rai addressed the gathering in his inimitable style. The curtains came up. The credits rolled. A finely made flash movie thanked our faculty for their encouragement and support.

The movie started. ‘Pirates of the Silicon Valley’. It was about Apple computers taking on the Big Blue. Steve Jobs and pal Woz making it big in an industry where CEOs asked ‘of what use is computer to ordinary people?’. It was about Bill Gates making big bucks right under the nose of Steve Jobs. It was probably a one movie distillation of a hundred documentaries on entrepreneurial drive and biz strategy. If you are here to move from cubicle to conference rooms and today made up your mind to move from classroom to audi, this movie was for you.

For those of you who couldn’t make it…well, guys.. looking forward to catch you all during FlickPic’s next flick.

It’s all about bottle and fresh air. Watch this space.

c u soon,

ganga