I know many have many story to write down here. Start writing then, here is a sneak peak of the type of fun we had today :)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Da CS-Par-T
I know many have many story to write down here. Start writing then, here is a sneak peak of the type of fun we had today :)
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Where it All Started..
Statutory warning: Read this post when you have a lot of time and patience ;)
This is the second draft of my post. The first one was deleted because of an unfortunate power cut when I was half way through! But nevertheless, I still don't mind putting all those thoughts down once again :)
Well we've been in the college for almost four years now, and officially entered the department three years ago. We'd never had any real, person-to-person interaction with the lecturers, the juniors, heck our own batch mates in the other section! There was never any platform for us to interact or showcase the enormous hidden talents (believe me.. there are LOTS!).
Then came the idea of starting off with a freshers' party in our seventh semester. A lot of planning was done, lots of opinions considered. But we all know how that turned out :P It wasn't that it was a bad idea or anything, we just didn't get enough support! 'Whose' support is not really important, as all of us are in a better place now :)
As we stepped into the last semester of our engineering lives, most of us had that urge to do something big, something memorable, something which would set a trend. That is what turned out to be the wonder: CieSta '09!
When someone decides to do something good, you find more people who would rather pull them down than encourage them. Some of them are jealous, some acrimonious, and some others who talk crap just for the heck of it! I'm sure most of us were faced with such people, some within the branch, most outside.
There were many more glitches to come. First came the problem of fixing up the date for the fest. It HAD to be the weekend after Ugadi, as there was a multitude of other fests to follow! That was the first shot in our arms. Being a long weekend, we speculated that the auditorium might not even be half-filled! Little did we know that all our negative speculations would be proven wrong! :) Then there was the task of convincing the juniors to stay back for the fest, or atleast come back a day or two earlier so that we'd have some participation from our own people. We even had to beg and plead with them, but I'd still say the response from one particular batch was more than disappointing! (I've decided not to divulge in details, but if they're reading I bet they'll know it's THEM I'm talking about!)
Then came an even bigger blow. We were supposed to conduct the fest WITHOUT any sponsorship! Never had we ever heard of something like this, but still there was that determination to go on and prove all those people, who thought we couldn't do it, wrong. But most importantly we wanted to prove to ourselves that we are actually capable of going through and completing what we'd started off, no matter what barricades were put up in our way!
The most important factor that leads to the success of any fest is proper organization. And most of the times it turns out to be a case of too many cooks! To our good luck we found a group of highly talented, patient and efficient leaders. The minute they took charge, everything fell into the right place!
As Bharat has mentioned, the actual boost came when the posters came out. The sheer joy of finding such unique, exclusive and colourful poster pumped us all up! (I personally love the NAUTANKI poster, with Sada popping out of it ;)) Credits to Mithilesh, Sameer (the poster boys :P) and the whole team!
It was decided that all the committees would be headed by a senior and would have the required juniors working under them. It wasn't really that tough putting the seniors in-charge. Finding volunteers was pretty hard! But the number of people who turned up was just right to fill all the requirements :)
A never lasting debate on whether to have a Fashion Show or not creeped up again, and at the very last moment of finalizing the cultural schedule, it was decided to go ahead with it. Turned out to be a pretty good decision :) Credits to all people who insisted on going ahead with it!
Another idea was to come up with offbeat names for the events. Hence came up the names:
Skit competition: Nautanki.. full kooLe macha!
Antakshari: Oooo la la!
Answer the previous question: Ghajini
Dumb Charades: Ssshhhh!!!.. actions speak louder than words
Entertainment quiz: EQ.. test your entertainment quotient
How well do you know your best friend: Aptamitra.. mera yaar, meri zindagi
Blind SMS contest: Typo.. how fast can you msg.. blind!
Another interesting event was 'Lage Raho', a questionnaire about the CS department. It had some pretty interesting questions, and was a way of people getting to know facts about the juniors, seniors and the lecturers! The credit here goes to DP :)
On the insistence of a few very interested juniors, we decided to have Cricket matches and Volleyball matches. I bet none of us had an idea how athletic the lecturers were! They really surprised all of us! :)
Everyone present on the two days knows how the event turned out. To say it was a 'grand success' still wouldn't do justice! What we had started off to do, we had finally accomplished it! Even those peevish people who had ridiculed us had to finally acknowledge the fact that we were successful :) CieSta has set the trend, and that is evident from the sudden emergence of other branches to 'show everyone what they too can do'! (No offence guys ;))
I was supposed to rewrite this post last night, i.e. on the 30th of March, a day after the fest. And that's when a storm hit me! Before I could realize what was happening, it had me totally engulfed in it. It was the sudden realization that it was actually ALL OVER! How those two days had come and gone never occurred to most of us. I guess we all were a little too busy focusing on what to do and how to do it. It never dawned upon us that this was our actual last 'celebration' in college!
When I could finally clear my mind a little, I sought the help of a few friends, talked my heart out. Then it became evident that I wasn't the only one sufferring from a post-CieSta depression! There were atleast 20 more people with me. And that made me feel a little better :)
I hope the juniors understand our intention behind having this fest. It really meant a LOT to us. It gave us a place to interact, a place to expose talent, a place to get to know more people, a place where we could really be US! The end result was beyond our expectation, and I will be ever grateful to all those people who helped us out. These were two amazingly wonderful days, and the best two days we've had in college :)
There are some people who deserve special mention for making the fest happen. The first would be Santhosh Sir. If it wasn't for him I bet we would've had a hundred more problems to face! He really made it a lot easier for us. Then come Satish and Arvind, two extremely potent leaders. If not for them we wouldn't have had the fest in the first place! There are tens of other names I'll have to mention, but it would be unfair to those whose names I might forget ;)
It's our humble request to you juniors that all of you come together every year and keep making CieSta better and better, until it is your turn to say these same things to your juniors ;)
-Pavithra Joshi
8th CSB
This is the second draft of my post. The first one was deleted because of an unfortunate power cut when I was half way through! But nevertheless, I still don't mind putting all those thoughts down once again :)
Well we've been in the college for almost four years now, and officially entered the department three years ago. We'd never had any real, person-to-person interaction with the lecturers, the juniors, heck our own batch mates in the other section! There was never any platform for us to interact or showcase the enormous hidden talents (believe me.. there are LOTS!).
Then came the idea of starting off with a freshers' party in our seventh semester. A lot of planning was done, lots of opinions considered. But we all know how that turned out :P It wasn't that it was a bad idea or anything, we just didn't get enough support! 'Whose' support is not really important, as all of us are in a better place now :)
As we stepped into the last semester of our engineering lives, most of us had that urge to do something big, something memorable, something which would set a trend. That is what turned out to be the wonder: CieSta '09!
When someone decides to do something good, you find more people who would rather pull them down than encourage them. Some of them are jealous, some acrimonious, and some others who talk crap just for the heck of it! I'm sure most of us were faced with such people, some within the branch, most outside.
There were many more glitches to come. First came the problem of fixing up the date for the fest. It HAD to be the weekend after Ugadi, as there was a multitude of other fests to follow! That was the first shot in our arms. Being a long weekend, we speculated that the auditorium might not even be half-filled! Little did we know that all our negative speculations would be proven wrong! :) Then there was the task of convincing the juniors to stay back for the fest, or atleast come back a day or two earlier so that we'd have some participation from our own people. We even had to beg and plead with them, but I'd still say the response from one particular batch was more than disappointing! (I've decided not to divulge in details, but if they're reading I bet they'll know it's THEM I'm talking about!)
Then came an even bigger blow. We were supposed to conduct the fest WITHOUT any sponsorship! Never had we ever heard of something like this, but still there was that determination to go on and prove all those people, who thought we couldn't do it, wrong. But most importantly we wanted to prove to ourselves that we are actually capable of going through and completing what we'd started off, no matter what barricades were put up in our way!
The most important factor that leads to the success of any fest is proper organization. And most of the times it turns out to be a case of too many cooks! To our good luck we found a group of highly talented, patient and efficient leaders. The minute they took charge, everything fell into the right place!
As Bharat has mentioned, the actual boost came when the posters came out. The sheer joy of finding such unique, exclusive and colourful poster pumped us all up! (I personally love the NAUTANKI poster, with Sada popping out of it ;)) Credits to Mithilesh, Sameer (the poster boys :P) and the whole team!
It was decided that all the committees would be headed by a senior and would have the required juniors working under them. It wasn't really that tough putting the seniors in-charge. Finding volunteers was pretty hard! But the number of people who turned up was just right to fill all the requirements :)
A never lasting debate on whether to have a Fashion Show or not creeped up again, and at the very last moment of finalizing the cultural schedule, it was decided to go ahead with it. Turned out to be a pretty good decision :) Credits to all people who insisted on going ahead with it!
Another idea was to come up with offbeat names for the events. Hence came up the names:
Skit competition: Nautanki.. full kooLe macha!
Antakshari: Oooo la la!
Answer the previous question: Ghajini
Dumb Charades: Ssshhhh!!!.. actions speak louder than words
Entertainment quiz: EQ.. test your entertainment quotient
How well do you know your best friend: Aptamitra.. mera yaar, meri zindagi
Blind SMS contest: Typo.. how fast can you msg.. blind!
Another interesting event was 'Lage Raho', a questionnaire about the CS department. It had some pretty interesting questions, and was a way of people getting to know facts about the juniors, seniors and the lecturers! The credit here goes to DP :)
On the insistence of a few very interested juniors, we decided to have Cricket matches and Volleyball matches. I bet none of us had an idea how athletic the lecturers were! They really surprised all of us! :)
Everyone present on the two days knows how the event turned out. To say it was a 'grand success' still wouldn't do justice! What we had started off to do, we had finally accomplished it! Even those peevish people who had ridiculed us had to finally acknowledge the fact that we were successful :) CieSta has set the trend, and that is evident from the sudden emergence of other branches to 'show everyone what they too can do'! (No offence guys ;))
I was supposed to rewrite this post last night, i.e. on the 30th of March, a day after the fest. And that's when a storm hit me! Before I could realize what was happening, it had me totally engulfed in it. It was the sudden realization that it was actually ALL OVER! How those two days had come and gone never occurred to most of us. I guess we all were a little too busy focusing on what to do and how to do it. It never dawned upon us that this was our actual last 'celebration' in college!
When I could finally clear my mind a little, I sought the help of a few friends, talked my heart out. Then it became evident that I wasn't the only one sufferring from a post-CieSta depression! There were atleast 20 more people with me. And that made me feel a little better :)
I hope the juniors understand our intention behind having this fest. It really meant a LOT to us. It gave us a place to interact, a place to expose talent, a place to get to know more people, a place where we could really be US! The end result was beyond our expectation, and I will be ever grateful to all those people who helped us out. These were two amazingly wonderful days, and the best two days we've had in college :)
There are some people who deserve special mention for making the fest happen. The first would be Santhosh Sir. If it wasn't for him I bet we would've had a hundred more problems to face! He really made it a lot easier for us. Then come Satish and Arvind, two extremely potent leaders. If not for them we wouldn't have had the fest in the first place! There are tens of other names I'll have to mention, but it would be unfair to those whose names I might forget ;)
It's our humble request to you juniors that all of you come together every year and keep making CieSta better and better, until it is your turn to say these same things to your juniors ;)
-Pavithra Joshi
8th CSB
Monday, March 30, 2009
"Ciesta 09"-- A Success Saga
A messed up schedule on a festive week, a rigid/stingy Princi(with apologies :P) with very less co-operation, with literally no sponsorship, very less paisa-collection from batch mates/juniors, we kicked off the preparations for CieSta-09.It all began with Satish taking up the enterprise of organizing the fest at any cost. The volunteer meet made sure we all seniors were left with some job on hand to handle the fest. Believe me, even after that I was very much skeptical about the fest. Budget was of huge concern and the timing too. I was given the mantle of handling the Entertainment Quiz (EQ). With Aparna, Santhosh, Chethan and a bunch of juniors, we started off preparing for our maiden quiz show!! We also involved ourselves in other committees helping out our friends.
A week before the fest, the publicity committee came up with some amazing set of placards which really electrified our cranial nerves! It gave us that much needed kick to begin with. In the background, we were preparing for a surprise, a surprise storm which later swept the CieSta Dance floor!!! Also PJ and Sanjana involved me in the Fashion show too (my 1st ever walk)!! Sadly, until the previous day of the fest we never practiced but still we managed to fire up the ramp on the D-day (!) all credits to Lakshmi and Sanjana.
So with all those initial glitches and hiccups, finally we reached the D-day! It was our fest, the fest which had all our hearts and brains involved in it, we wanted to make it a Box-office success in JCE history!
The inaugurals went well and were kept pretty simple.”Antakshari” organized by my friends Greeshma and Aparna gave an auspicious beginning to the final success saga! The decibel levels in the auditorium crossed the limits throughout the event and many were left with the dampened vocal chords. The cultural evening waved off with a bundle of skits sharing the limelight! The satire and humour filled “NON-VEGGY” skits/playlets left us with no option but to gag with the hearts in our mouths and girls had to tickle and giggle themselves out of half embarrassment and half understood antics! Though NIE skit was way better than HOGE-BOYS playlet, the favoritism and home crowd advantage made it a memorable night for HOGE-BOYS.
The 2nd day commenced with “us” practicing for the ramp walk and later Dumbcharades ushering the morning show. Then it was our maiden Quiz show which made a decent impact. The evening began with a picturesque looking lady hosting the show and all JCE dudes having their eye “LINES” glued to that host! My roommate Adarsh with his soothing and quixotic vocal chord switched on lots of fans around making the atmosphere still emphatic.
“Garbage Collectors”- A bunch of multi-talented guys (including me:P) then broke the jinx. After a successful campaign as “ Besurdas’ - Jayciana-08” , they rocked the CieSta floor with their peculiar/unconventional/rib tickling dance steps. The sounds of “ONCE MORE..” reverberated around the auditorium through the entire JCE campus! VIBHINN ‘s percussion expertise energized our senses. The day ceased off with a retro, provocative and ethnic fashion rounds heating up the ramp!
And that’s our success saga. "CieSta-09" is a moment to savour and remember forever. “CieSta-09 “will always be an inspiration to juniors. We showed everybody that it’s not about sponsorship and spending money, it’s about getting things organized and managing well. My sincere salutes to Satish and Arvind, they were true leaders in every sense. So with just around 5 fortnights left for our farewell, I will always remember “CieSta-09” as one of the major bookmarks in my Engineering career :)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bharat Rao P,
8th CS 'A'Sunday, March 29, 2009
Word 'Ciesta' had no meaning until today!
When people said, the CS fest would be called CIESTA, I said what? they said CIESTA? I said "Is there a chocolate with that name? It sounds just like that!". This was a few weeks back, few were hanging on the threads, some had already quit. Some had already booked tickets back home. Out of nowhere came this strange feeling of having a fest, branch fest. I don't know why would someone bother about an event which has never happened for the last 4 years. In fact, this was one strong platform upon which many people stood and kept yelling "hey you! why are you drowning with that idea of fest? come here and stand, since 4 years no one had had this fest, what makes you think you can do it?"
Probably right then, those words struck like a bell, no one has done it for the last 4 years, why not we do it now? Initially I too was skeptical. The biggest problems were right in front of us. Biggest of all was CONVINCING. Especially convincing ourself. I did it to myself first, and I joined the team. Once done with that, we had all kinds of people doing their best to make sure that the fest doesn't see its day. Then one by one, everyone started joining in, more and more started thinking that it is actually possible. Then few throw a bet on us, if we could sail a boat without the paddle, ride the car without steers, fly a jet without wings, and essentially run a 2 day fest without sponsors. And there it was. It came from nowhere, an even more strong feeling of making this happen!. when THEY could do their best, we too can! after all we are their students :).
From that day, we started seeing people running around, collecting bits and pieces which could finish this puzzle. We had to do this, and we had to do it right! The best part was that, there was no need to ask everyone in person. Everyone knew it well, this was their last chance in college. We have seen almost everyone in motion and at various places uttering CIESTA CIESTA CIESTA..
All said,
When the day actually did arrive, it was nothing short of a Grand Wedding ceremony, where our dreams wed reality. I hope EVERYONE who thought we couldn't and shouldn't do the fest understood to a very good extent that they were overwhelmingly wrong, and they had to take an entirely new route to cover their tracks. CIESTA 09 began with the CS inmates dressed up in non-CS ethnic dresses. It was a pleasure watching the boys expose where as girls covered themselves :). Followed by the events for teachers, wherein our teachers were beaten and bitten hard by the laughter, happiness and enthusiasm of various events, and not to mention the magnitude of happiness of students who saw their beloved (?) lecturers polymorphosise. It then was followed by various skit teams competing against each other with the deadliest weapon in the world- LAUGHTER ( and Bin Laden thought it was a plane with a AHole Pilot!). While many girls struggled to decode the jokes, others were busy searching for a place to roll and laugh. And then there were solo songs, which brought out the BOYS out of boys. And oh my gosh! we had not seen 6 packs in the last 6 sems! ( no offence). There were other dances too! of course we look at girls too.
With the next sunrise, many woke up at a strange time and saw their watches in a state which they had never seen before. There were already people in audi warming the stage. Then started the events of all kinds rolling, Blind SMS, Lage Raho, Aapthamitra, EQ quiz. For a moment, we didn't realize, probably many might not have even realized by now; We have unknowingly made history (at least in small proportion) in SJCE.
CIESTA is the first full fledged 2 days fest, conducted without even a PENNY from sponsors. THANK YOU CS GUYS.
CIESTA had the best ever climax. We had many colorful girls, dressed in vividly vibrant colors, dancing on color filled stage. Only then we realize we had had girls in our dept, who could create stir! only thing we missed till date was a perspective to see them in a different version. Yeah, yeah, there were some anti-social elements too, who tried their level best to shake the "Ciesta" and they couldn't even shake the " of the "Ciesta". Swear on the evil nature of George Bush, we saw people on stage, who were never to be seen outside the class if there were any lectures going on. We saw almost every one climb on stage and enthrall the rest. Then there were people who conveyed tons and fetched bagful of applause with the help of 'ting' and 'tong' of instruments and not use a single word. There were more songs, which kept the C connected to I and E to make CIESTA. Finally there was Fashion Show!. what to talk about that? People who have seen it know it. Girls were looking at girls and boys on boys, and girls on boys and boys on girls? There wasn't a need of fashionable clothes, nor the flashy lights, their gaits conveyed everything.
And it ended, with a slide show which depicted SJCE in chunks of memory with a real time melodious stereo uncompressed audio feed. We don't know how, but we were on stage with our hands waving and feets tapping, we didn't care how we looked dancing, how we looked making odd faces, how our dresses looked when we raised our legs to kick the air, neither did we bother our friend's completely sweat wet hands lying on our Reebok or Westend t-shirt, nor the hands that made a V on our heads, not even the one kilo feet that lay on our feet, while we kept our teeth wide open as the lights flashed in an unpredicted manner, in various varity at various resolution and in various colors, but write just one message; A message that I had understood by then, its not the fun we had in two days, not the COLORS that we saw on stage, not the shoutings that got us tired, but something, that would make much more sense when kept in simple words; the word "CIESTA" had made sense......
" Impossible is Nothing, and when we are together we won't even need the motivation from the first phrase of this sentence"
Probably right then, those words struck like a bell, no one has done it for the last 4 years, why not we do it now? Initially I too was skeptical. The biggest problems were right in front of us. Biggest of all was CONVINCING. Especially convincing ourself. I did it to myself first, and I joined the team. Once done with that, we had all kinds of people doing their best to make sure that the fest doesn't see its day. Then one by one, everyone started joining in, more and more started thinking that it is actually possible. Then few throw a bet on us, if we could sail a boat without the paddle, ride the car without steers, fly a jet without wings, and essentially run a 2 day fest without sponsors. And there it was. It came from nowhere, an even more strong feeling of making this happen!. when THEY could do their best, we too can! after all we are their students :).
From that day, we started seeing people running around, collecting bits and pieces which could finish this puzzle. We had to do this, and we had to do it right! The best part was that, there was no need to ask everyone in person. Everyone knew it well, this was their last chance in college. We have seen almost everyone in motion and at various places uttering CIESTA CIESTA CIESTA..
All said,
When the day actually did arrive, it was nothing short of a Grand Wedding ceremony, where our dreams wed reality. I hope EVERYONE who thought we couldn't and shouldn't do the fest understood to a very good extent that they were overwhelmingly wrong, and they had to take an entirely new route to cover their tracks. CIESTA 09 began with the CS inmates dressed up in non-CS ethnic dresses. It was a pleasure watching the boys expose where as girls covered themselves :). Followed by the events for teachers, wherein our teachers were beaten and bitten hard by the laughter, happiness and enthusiasm of various events, and not to mention the magnitude of happiness of students who saw their beloved (?) lecturers polymorphosise. It then was followed by various skit teams competing against each other with the deadliest weapon in the world- LAUGHTER ( and Bin Laden thought it was a plane with a AHole Pilot!). While many girls struggled to decode the jokes, others were busy searching for a place to roll and laugh. And then there were solo songs, which brought out the BOYS out of boys. And oh my gosh! we had not seen 6 packs in the last 6 sems! ( no offence). There were other dances too! of course we look at girls too.
With the next sunrise, many woke up at a strange time and saw their watches in a state which they had never seen before. There were already people in audi warming the stage. Then started the events of all kinds rolling, Blind SMS, Lage Raho, Aapthamitra, EQ quiz. For a moment, we didn't realize, probably many might not have even realized by now; We have unknowingly made history (at least in small proportion) in SJCE.
CIESTA is the first full fledged 2 days fest, conducted without even a PENNY from sponsors. THANK YOU CS GUYS.
CIESTA had the best ever climax. We had many colorful girls, dressed in vividly vibrant colors, dancing on color filled stage. Only then we realize we had had girls in our dept, who could create stir! only thing we missed till date was a perspective to see them in a different version. Yeah, yeah, there were some anti-social elements too, who tried their level best to shake the "Ciesta" and they couldn't even shake the " of the "Ciesta". Swear on the evil nature of George Bush, we saw people on stage, who were never to be seen outside the class if there were any lectures going on. We saw almost every one climb on stage and enthrall the rest. Then there were people who conveyed tons and fetched bagful of applause with the help of 'ting' and 'tong' of instruments and not use a single word. There were more songs, which kept the C connected to I and E to make CIESTA. Finally there was Fashion Show!. what to talk about that? People who have seen it know it. Girls were looking at girls and boys on boys, and girls on boys and boys on girls? There wasn't a need of fashionable clothes, nor the flashy lights, their gaits conveyed everything.
And it ended, with a slide show which depicted SJCE in chunks of memory with a real time melodious stereo uncompressed audio feed. We don't know how, but we were on stage with our hands waving and feets tapping, we didn't care how we looked dancing, how we looked making odd faces, how our dresses looked when we raised our legs to kick the air, neither did we bother our friend's completely sweat wet hands lying on our Reebok or Westend t-shirt, nor the hands that made a V on our heads, not even the one kilo feet that lay on our feet, while we kept our teeth wide open as the lights flashed in an unpredicted manner, in various varity at various resolution and in various colors, but write just one message; A message that I had understood by then, its not the fun we had in two days, not the COLORS that we saw on stage, not the shoutings that got us tired, but something, that would make much more sense when kept in simple words; the word "CIESTA" had made sense......
" Impossible is Nothing, and when we are together we won't even need the motivation from the first phrase of this sentence"
- Sameer.A.M
8th CSB
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