Mood-i

Dec 31st 2008 10:17 pm. The year 2008 almost coming to an end. In less than 2 hours a whole new year starts. What does that mean?. Nothing except that my vacation is done with and the 2nd semester starts tomorrow :(. I may as well end this year with a new blog. What better topic for the blog other than my experiences in Mood-i. Mood-i is the yearly cultural event that is conducted by IIT Bombay. It happens towards the end of December of each year. This year it was from 20th-23th of December. Mood-i is the biggest ever cultural program that I have ever attended till date and the experiences were worth it's weight in gold.

Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the campus on 20th since I had a get together with my close friends at Kochi on 19th. I, along with my classmate Vinu, reached campus on 21st around afternoon. As soon as we entered the campus, the sea change that the campus had undergone hit us with full impact. At first I thought I may have ended up in heaven surrounded by hundreds of beautiful angels, albeit with smaller clothes. The desert that was the IIT (regarding girls that is) has suddenly become Hawaii beach. There were lots and lots of banners and posters on both sides of the main road. All along the roadsides were stalls and Proshows. In one of the stall, sponsored by Ponds company, some kind of game was going on. I didn't know what the game was...but all I could see was that girls were standing on guys feet and dancing. Research is still going on world over to ascertain the amount of heartburn these things causes to unlucky guys like me, who are not so lucky with girls.

Soon I reached my room, took a bath, changed into a new set of clothes and then set out to explore the campus. I soon met up with with our guys Adil, Vishal, Harshad, Ajitav, Vaibhav and Ladha. They had all reached the day before and so were blessed enough to enjoy Mood-i from Day 1. From them I came to know that the Circus, that was supposed to be have been held the previous day got cancelled due to the crowd getting out of hand. This had also resulted in police lathi charge. Vishal recounted his "bravery" wherein he managed to escape the lathi charge by pushing the guy in front away and ran for his dear life.

According to the schedule there was going to be a DJ party on the swimming pool side at around 4:30 pm on all 4 days. Well before the scheduled time people would start forming queue in front of the poolside. Having no other events to attend around that time, we too stood in the line. We whiled away our time chit chatting and enjoying the natural scenary around us, mainly dressed in tops and mini skirts. At around 4:30 pm, the line started moving. Just before we reached the front of the queue, our eyes suddenly fell on a board kept near the poolside entrance
"COUPLE ENTRY ONLY"
Needless to say we didn't wait anymore though Ajitav said we still stood a chance. After all it's not mentioned that the couples should be straight.
But Harshad was determined to see what was happening in the DJ party. He had already made big plans to go about it, the blueprint of the plans being kept classified. But highly placed sources revealed to us that his plan went thus : "Identify a girl standing alone, go to her, and then go around her in a circle of radius of around 10 cm whispering poolside poolside". We never came to know whether he was successful, but we did see a red mark on his cheeks, the next day, which remotely looked like the party symbol of the Congress party.

The 6:30 events are the hightlights of each day. The events are usually concerts by different eminent people. These 6:30 events also have a commong feature. The experience of standing in the queue for these concerts gives you a miniature feel of how people get into a local train at Dadar station on weekdays. The entire "drama" starts with a wait of around 1.5 hours before the scheduled time. It starts with a single line at around 5 pm and minutes before 6:30 pm when they are about to start admitting people into the OAT ( Open Air Theatre) there would have formed around 5-6 lines. At 6:30 pm they start admitting people. Since only one line will be admitted by the security guys, pushing and shoving starts between the guys in these 5-6 lines inorder to form a single line. One needs to rely on one's no-one-get-better-of-me attitude to successfully get in. Motto: No compassion for others. Make sure you get your ass inside if you want to get your seat.If one gets to train himself in this format for a week, then I am pretty sure he would qualify himself to enter the local train from Dadar station on any day at any time. In contrast to this, the ladies-only line makes a mockery of all these efforts we guys put into getting a good seat. The girls stand relaxed, only one line at the 5 pm and also at 6:30 pm. No 5-6 lines like us :(. At 6:30 pm, when the entry starts, they calmly enter the OAT, with no pushing or pulling. ( For the unknowns, Dadar station is an important station for mumbaikars for whom the local metro train is the lifeline. A speciality of Dadar station is irrespective of whether the compartment is empty or overflowing, the latter being the more probable case, the "Dadarians" make it a point to punch each others' face when trying to get in. In case you are one of the unlucky few who have to board from the Dadar station, and you somehow manage to get inside the compartment, there is a high probability that the count of your teeth would have been reduced by atleast one).

The 6:30 concert events went thus : On 21st it was a concert by Kavitha Seth and then another by roop kumar rathod ( Veer Zaara music director) and his wife Sonali (I think). On 22nd it was the Indian Ocean Band and concert by Rabbi Shergill. 23rd was the biggest draw with concert by Mohit chauhan and Sonu Nigam. The Mood-i officially closed with the Sonu Nigam concert. All concerts were good though my favourites were Sonu Nigam and Indian Ocean.

The mornings were full of small small programs and gameshows which were very entertaining. Unfortunately there are so many of them that it cannot be mentioned in just one post. In this blog, I have just touched upon some interesting experiences I had in Mood-i and haven't mentioned much about how much I enjoyed all the events that were there. Even then I should make a special mention about "Laughter Lyrics", where 4 highly regarded comic hindi poets , though I forgot their names, thoroughly enthralled the audience with their sheer comic timings and dialogue deliveries. According to me, it easily stands out from the rest of the events I saw. I will definitely make sure not to miss any part of Mood-i next year.

Time : 2 am Jan 1st 2009. The new year has already come. A very very happy new year for all.