February 2nd, 2008 Roshan
As my memory degrades logarithmically with time I think I should just summarize what happened over Saarang. I don’t quite remember Wednesday, I don’t think they had any events then, just an inauguration ceremony, so that makes Thursday Day 1.
Day 1
We got there at around 1 and played Cluedo, which is this game in which they give you this ‘mystery’ and you have to all Miss Marple on it. We solved a couple, while Bikram and James managed nearly all of them. We made up for all of these by writing stupid jokes on the top of each question. I don’t think the IIT crowd enjoyed them enough because they didn’t give us a place. Ah well.
Then there was Ex Tempore, the preliminaries, where Pipe and I participated in. They had this interestingly different way of doing things - one word topics. Pipe got porcupine, and I’m told he was hilarious, playing Fr. Kurien Jose perfectly. I got “rubberband” and I think I managed to do pretty decently myself. We both qualified.
The India Quiz, ah, we got flattened here. Much embarrassment at our general lack of awareness of the events in this nation was experienced, and much awe at the realisation that Oppenheimer spoke Sanskrit when he saw the H-bomb. Nevertheless, I sat there giving ridiculous answers while Pipe and Bikram answered all the questions they could properly. We didn’t make it, as is obvious.
That was it for the first day, I think.
Day 2
I don’t remember what was on this day. Ah yes, three things. Very important things. Firstly, when we left home, I noticed that the battery indicator on the car (which had been complaining the night before) had gone normal, but I warned my dad about it anyway. Of course, that was sensible. What wasn’t so sensible was deciding to take that very car and drive to IIT - it promptly shut off at the signal opposite Pantaloons, Gandhinagar. I had to push it while Bikram did his best to guide into the median, but we managed to get it to the side, lock it and get Illustrious Sibling to cycle over to retrieve the key. Once IS had reached, I had to tell him about the second item on the agenda - retrieve Chitra’s book from the shelf where I had left it. I’d put off returning it for far too long.
IS came back with the book, but promptly dropped it while crossing the road on bicycle. Hilarity ensued for a short while after when I pretended that I was going to steal his bike (he’d left it on this side of the road while he ran to the other side to retrieve the book, and the traffic had started so he couldn’t cross). IS was not amused, but being the kind soul that he is, he gave me the book with some sarcastic remarks thrown in as a bonus. Nice chap.
Arriving at IIT, we went to participate in the quiz, where we did neither exceptionally well, nor exceptionally badly. I must admit, it was Bikram who told me about Gita Press, I did not know what the hell that was. As a matter of fact, I still don’t. In any case, I qualified. However, while leaving, I forgot that I had entered with a 300 page book under my arm and had left with a slightly lighter load. Returning 2 hours later, I found it gone. Predictably, I was upset. I mean, see, it says something about a college that students will take a book titled Mathematical Analysis (or some such) instead of being instantly repulsed.
Later in the day, however, I found that this nice chap had kept it in case it was lost and he returned it to me the next day. Nice chap, Chaitanya. Anyway, that evening I was at the quiz semifinals and the questions ranged from The Bible in LOLspeech to some artist who likes to draw people flying (or at weird angles) to the Beatles. A very interesting quiz, and it was fun. I missed out from the finals by 1 point (2 points per correct answer) primarily because I didn’t have the sense to get “Jehovah’s Witnesses”. Ah, such is life.
NOTE: IITians like the A/C turned to “damn cold”.
Day 3
This day went well, very nicely. Pipe and I participated in Ex Tempore finals and we both did well except for this one round where two participants are supposed to speak to each other and Pipe’s partner decided to talk all over him and only to the audience instead of having a conversation. It was disturbing to watch it happen. By contrast, the guy who was up with me was incredibly nice and in the 1 min we were given before starting he thought up one smart idea along which we’d do the whole thing. You see, he was 50 cent, and I was Sonia Gandhi so his idea was that he would suggest ways to campaign for me and I’d dismiss them. Guy’s a genius. We thought up the ways on stage, of course and it went off very well, both of us getting some laughs.
In the second round, each participant had to either play the part of a narrator to the video being shown on the screen (without the soundtrack) or speak the characters dialogues or make noises. Of course, we were shown the video a minute in advance. I had some scene from Sholay to talk about. It was rather violent: involving a guy, two swords, another guy chained, and the cutting off of the chained guys arms. Yes, painful. I spoke describing this as an orthopaedic surgery, wisely deciding not to name the swordsman after my father. Went off well, though I felt like I was advertising Shakthimaan after my last line which was rather lame. The third round was Block and Tackle, and it was rather funny.
I won first, so I’m pretty jazzed about that, so that’s why it gets 3 paragraphs. 2 paragraphs. Not counting this one. Whatever.
That’s about all that I remember, Saarang was fun. Pretty nice. I don’t quite remember all the wins our college got but here’s what I do remember:
- Power Chord: 2nd - Greyshack. Vikram won Best Guitarist. They’re good.
- Carnatic Music: 3rd - Arundhathi. I thought she’d place even higher, no surprise anyway :)
- Creative Writing: 2nd - Gitanjali. I forgot which day this was on, but she writes well so it hardly matters.
- Light Music: 1st - Udaan. Ha ha, these guys are awesome!
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