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Saturday, August 16, 2008

Malhar-ed

“Eh, chut! Frisk that bastard!”

Pardon the expletives, but what I speak—is merely what I heard at the supposed Holy Grail of Mumbai college festivals, Malhar. The security department has always been infamous, but this year—the vitriol was more concentrated, almost in a manner as if they were trying to be rude. And in turn, follow the long heritage of obnoxiousness ala mode.

I myself have organized two festivals and almost became a vice chairperson of one—and I have a chronic potty-mouth—but never have I ever dared to abuse a participant or visitor to a fest. Hospitality is key, and unfortunately, Malhar’s generation of obloquy-happy sycophants seems to be watching too much C.S.I to really care.

My own personal experiences this year—despite representing Wilson’s as Assistant-Contingent-Leader--have been rather flattering. While being frisked (ermm…molested, fondled with, my dignity still weeps :( ) I retrieved my pen-drive to show the rather homosexually-attuned volunteer who goes like:

“What is this? Is it explosive?”

“Oh hell yeah, blows big holes and works best in empty skulls, wanna try?”

He kept quiet. Probably the big Neanderthal needed a week to process all that information (But it didn’t stop him from dismantling my friend’s innocuous umbrella afterwards, to check for nitroglycerine or C4 or something)

Speaking of a Neanderthal culture, even the fabled demigods from the events department are even better! They’re not nearly as rude, but the rather orgasmic affinity to following procedure and rules is omnipresent.

Following the rather uncalled for pull-out of my team for a Shadow Theatre, I had to grab four classmates and be ready with a shitty impromptu adlib crass-drama that included me parading around as the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood—albeit one with an umbrella shoved up his rear acting as last-minute tail (It even bloomed in all its glory when Robin Hood—don’t ask where he came from—kills me!).

But that’s not what’s funny.

Apparently the guys at Indian Performing Arts (under whom Shadow Theatre fell) had written about a requirement of 2-3 accompanists.

One for sound.

One for light.

One for stage setup.

Sounds alright, logically correct. But dude—I have no sound, I have no lighting fuss, and I definitely don’t need an accompanist to shove the umbrella behind. So I didn’t get them, and they wouldn’t register me unless I got some. Why did I need the bloody accompanists? After arguing with C-3PO (volunteer), Frankenstein (OG), I finally hoped that I’d get an Angel of Mercy (OC). Alas! ALAS! She happened to be King Kong herself.

To explain this tiny problem of mine, she argued, AND argued with me for 25 minutes!

“You should have let me know about this a week ago!”

“Rules are rules! Can’t break them,”

“Ok, go, perform but I’ll give u minus 5!”

“Nobody should break rules, we made the rules for a reason.”

After half laughing through the random verbal-fencing, she finally agreed to let me in—sans minus points—but I’ll still have to get anyone’s ID card to act as if they were accompanists, but they wouldn’t have to be technically there.

The icing on the cake is more definitely the brilliant prizes given to you if you happen to be one of those Literary Arts junkies. My friends won 2nd prize in the graphic novel making and Evil quiz (don’t ask!).

Guess what they got?

A beautiful black Tata Indicom mug, a gorgeous Tata Indicom XXL t-shirt and an ABSOLUTELY LOVABLE, SHINY BLUE GARFIELD BOOK! WOW! Ofcourse they got a few vouchers like 500 off on a Chiragh Din shirt (Ha! The damn shirts started at 1500 there!) or 500 off on La Senza…hehehehehe, 500 more and you have ONE WHOLE BRA!! Most of these vouchers were expiring the span of a few days, we even had a 5 0 bucks off on some obscure brand!

Of course Malhar wasn’t entirely bad, the LA OC is an absolutely commendable young lady with brilliant event management skills, and I’m not being sarcastic. She showed great common sense and even let my participants register for their finals without a CL/ACL being physically present.

But the rest of them, yawn, typical—crass, overzealous and idiotic.

I heard a fleeting comment in a conversation with a volunteer who claimed this was the third year running where they were seeing a drop in footfalls. The veracity of the facts are obviously not in the public or rather present at all for verification.

But that's not surprised me at all, especially with Umang delivering the ultimate act of petulance by keeping the dates of their eliminations with the finals of Malhar. Umang is fast catching up, the amount of media coverage they’re garnering and with a whopping 97 colleges participating this year—give them 3 years time. If the rudeboys and gals at Malhar don’t go for either:

A. Anger management

B. Event Management

C. Common Sense Classes

D. Creativity and Lateral thinking (They even have a quiz for that; you get a Jockey Vest for winning it!)

E. All of the above

Then very soon, we won’t see no rage around Mahapalika Marg anymore come 15th August.

I shall run off to see Parikrama go ballistic at Umang now, instead of watching a bunch of amateurs strum some wannabe cover-pop at the aptly named Am-Night. I used to be obsessed with getting an admission into Xavier’s and organizing Malhar at one point of time. Having seen the brilliance, tch tch, I’d rather be at Wilsons

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A STUDENT OF NM COLLEGE OR HAVE NO LINKS WITH THE UMANG COMMITTEE NOR ARE THEY PAYING ME. I HAVE MORE FRIENDS IN XAVIERS THAN I DO IN NM. THESE ARE JUST A FEW HONEST POINTS OF VIEW ON PROCEEDINGS AT THE SUPPOSED KING OF THEM ALL. NO VOLUNTEERS/OGs/OCs/VCPs/CPs WERE HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS ARTICLE.

RANT OVER. THANK YOU.