Latest
DU Beat – Delhi University's Independent Student Newspaper
Tag

Kirori Mal College

Browsing
Kirorimal College

KMC closes Renaissance with metal band Parikrama

By

Renaissance 2014, Kirori Mal College’s annual fest, came to an end with one of the country’s pioneer metal bands Parikrama drumming it away to a memorable night.

The evening was opened by Alice Rose from UK, whose offerings included an acoustic, folk cover of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ and a couple of originals.

Next was Andolan, KMC’s fusion band and the air filled with melodies of classical Carnatic intertwined with western blues rock. Starting with a cover of Coke Studio Pakistan’s ‘Aaj Latha Naiyo’, they moved on to ‘Manmohini’ and then ‘Tanha Tanha’ from Rangeela before closing it off with their original bluesy number. Andolan’s magic was followed by Aadhya, a local band, which gave the crowd their much needed staple of Sufi rock by starting with ‘Allah Hoo’ and following it up with ‘Teri Deewani’ along with a couple of others.

nitin

By then the sky had turned windy and as the night’s main attraction seized the stage, the weather played the perfect companion to the music. Returning to the college after two decades, Parikrama lead vocalist Nitin Malik reminisced about their time in the North Campus and how the band was formed inside the KMC Musoc room. From old favourites like ‘And It Rained’, ‘Vapourize’ and ‘Am I Dreaming’ to the newer ‘Sweet as Sugar’, the band laid siege to the crowd. Particularly admired were the lead guitarist Sonam Sherpa and the violinist Imran Khan, with Nitin Malik’s impressive vocals ending the session with a cover of AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’, making Renaissance 2014’s closing night a roaring success.

Image Credit: Sahiba Chawdhary for DU Beat

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

Mika Singh performs in a packed field at Kirori Mal’s fest

By

Mika Singh performed at Kirori Mal College’s annual fest Renaissance 2014 on the 4th of March.

But as expected, Mika was a total crowd pleaser. He started the concert with ‘Mast Kalandar’ and went on to sing all his hit numbers like ‘Gandi Baat’ and ‘Saavan Mein Lag Gai Aag’. Like always, he wore sun glasses even after dusk and was completely in his loud Punjabi element. He inculcated the college name in all of his songs and sang medleys instead of full songs. The crowd merrily danced throughout the concert.

mika1

Like every other guest night, people poured in and every inch of the ground was covered and the star performer was fashionably late. Security was lax and not even ID cards were checked before granting entry. However, the organisers did have special enclosures for girls to ensure their safety. Even while the concert was on, pepper spray was sprayed in several areas which had people running helter-skelter with burning noses and teary eyes. The rowdy crowd eventually got to him too and he started asking people around the stage to move back. People took off their shirts and flung them in the air towards the stage, threw bottles and even rocks. Mika scolded quite a few students for acting in an inappropriate manner and for being disrespectful. He even discouraged smoking.

However, the concert in itself was a success, the sound system was great and the crowd enjoyed a great deal.

Image Credit: Sakshi Jaiswal

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

KMC hosts fourth edition of Joga Bonito

By

A 5-a-side open soccer tournament was recently organised by the Statistics department of Kirori Mal College (KMC), held between the 24th-25th of February at the college Football grounds. The event was sponsored by the Indian Football Foundation, a charity organisation founded and run by veteran footballer, Baichung Bhutia.

Having registered a total of 39 teams in it’s last edition, the event was only able to play host to 17 teams this year around. This particularly relates to the event’s inter-lapping with the Inter-College football tournament at SRCC, causing several teams to back out at the last minute. This temporary setback was not of much relevance though, as it gave many pass-out students a chance to participate in the event. Not only did these senior groups of students raise the bar for the tournament, but they also introduced a more mature and tactical approach to the game.

Quick, fast paced, and based on counter attacking football, the initial stages of the tournament witnessed a burst of goals from all of the teams managing to qualify. By the time of the semi-finals however, this initial thrust of goals had slowed down, as the two finalists, Bhushan FC and Ravens FC only managed a 1-0 and 2-1 win against their respective opponents. The finals of the tournament was also another low scoring affair, with both sides focusing more on not conceding goals. Despite a solid defensive display by Ravens FC, Bhushan FC managed to score twice as they went on to win the match by 2 goals to 1. They took home a cash prize of Rs 12000 along with a customized Barcelona Nike ball, while the runners up received a cash reward of Rs 5000.

While the fourth edition of the Joga Bonito may not have been able to replicate the magnitude and grandeur of the previous three tournaments, a case can certainly be made on the event managing to hold on to its very essence and spirit. Prabhat, one of the organisers of the event, calls the event a ‘goodwill building exercise’, as this experience of coordinating the event will only help them organise the future tournaments with much more understanding and confidence. Building on this, he believes this practical knowledge of hosting Joga Bonito will most certainly play a key role in next year’s tournament edition.

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

The Round Table Society of Kirori Mal College organises a seminar on RTI

By

The Round Table Society of Kirori Mal College organized a seminar and workshop on ‘Right to Information (RTI) and its role and achievements’ on Thursday, 20th February in the college seminar room. The event started with a welcome speech by Dr. S.P. Gupta, principal of the college, in which he welcomed and introduced the society ‘The Round Table’ to the audience, comprising of students and teachers of various departments and colleges.

Dr. Rupak Dattagupta, the convener of the society felicitated the distinguished speakers- Mr. Shankar Singh , Mr. Subhash Chandra Agarwal  and  Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil with bouquets as a token of respect and gratitude . As the program proceeded, a video and power point presentation were shown to the audience, in order to give a brief insight to the audience on the topic of discussion, motive of the society to promote it and to introduce the speakers.

Post by The Round Table.

The first speaker of the event was Mr. Shankar Singh, a renowned RTI activist, who shared his experiences relating to his fight for promoting RTI at grass root level where there is maximum ignorance. His speech inspired us to fight for this very basic right of ours and to use it for everyone’s benefit.  Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil , a young RTI activist and scholar explained his experiences with the administrative sector and how he used RTI as a tool to get answers for his grievances. In between, questions were put up by audience to the speakers about usage, purpose and need of RTI. After the question answer session, a presentation was shown on how successful RTI had been in the recent years, in a positive manner.

The last speech was made by Mr. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, in which he expressed his personal life experiences relating to filing of RTI and its petition, in quite an entertaining manner. He also put forward many real life examples where RTI proved to be a savior when people’s rights were exploited.

A workshop was conducted by Mr Afroz Alam Sahil relating to online and offline filling of RTI. During this session, many questions were put up by the audience to which Mr. Afroz Alam Sahil answered each question satisfactorily. Lastly, the vote of thanks was given by the president of “The Round Table” Mr. Robin Kumar and certificates were distributed to all attendees.

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

KMC Debsoc conducts 34th Frank Thakur Das parliamentary debate

By

The 34th Frank Thakur Das Parliamentary Debate saw teams from all over the country fight it out through the intense competition and challenging rounds to claim the title. The four day event between 7th and 10th February was organized by the Kirori Mal College Debating Society. The tournament was open and hence allowed institutional crosses.

The tournament featured some of the strongest institutional and cross teams in the circuit. FTD followed the 3 on 3 Asians’ parliamentary debate format. A total of thirty six teams participated in the debate and eight teams broke to participate in quarters.

The final saw last year’s runners up Backstreet’s back (Rohan Kochar, Rounaq Chandrashekhar and Akshay Raghupati) go up against LSR A (Sasha Bhatnagar, Urmi Tat and Shaily Saluja). The motion for the final round was based on the context that gods were in fact aliens who subjugated mankind and that one individual had discovered this evidence. The motion was that “The house believes that this individual should reveal this information to the world”. The cross team Backstreet’s back emerged victorious. The best adjudicator for the tournament was Eashan Ghosh (popularly known as Ego).

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

Gunday star-cast visits Kirori Mal College

By

Priyanka Chopra, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor and director Ali Abbas Zafar visited Kirori Mal College on 10th February to promote their upcoming film, “Gunday” which is to hit theaters this Friday on Valentine’s Day. The star cast reached the fan packed college premises at 12:15pm making their way to the stage set at Ashoka Lawns for their interaction with exhilarated crowd of Delhi University. The college premises were under local police protection to manage the colossal crowd with help of barricades. Students’ entry on college ID card was opened and closed at regular intervals. The estimated crowd of 12,000 Delhi University students (as reported by the KMC Students’ Union) soon became unmanageable when the star cast came out to meet their young fans. The visit was a short one of approximately thirty minutes and due to security glitches the star cast and crew left the premises escorted by local police.

Within their paucity of time the stars interacted with the crowd and performed on their prominent dance number “Tune Maari Entriyaan” which drove the crowd crazy with excitement. The campus was roaring with hoots and cheers continuously throughout the event. Along with the pull and push the crowd seemed satisfied with the star interaction.

1794658_10202365236265326_1262632264_n

A first year Gargi college student who came to see the stars said, “The crowd was crazy. People were pushing people like nobody’s business, specially when the actors came out in public.”

Another second year student fan of the stars from Hindu College said, “It was amazing when they danced on Tune Maari Entriyaan. KMC Union made my dream come true.”

arjunkapoor

The student’s union bragged the populated pre-event by calling it “just a trailer” for their upcoming fest, Renaissance ’14 scheduled in the last week of February. Commenting on the successful pre-event, Jashvender Chauhan, President, KMC Students’ Union said, “This was the most crowded event in the history of KMC. We are proud of the grand opening to our annual fest, Renaissance ’14.”

Image courtesy: Abhishek Gupta

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

Kirorimal College organises TEDx on ‘Dialogue for the Rational Indian’

By

TED talks are famous all over the world for their inspirational and innovative messages. What makes the concept even better is that videos of these talks are available for anyone on the internet to see, for free!

A TEDx, or an independently organised TED event, is a localised version of TED talks. TEDxKiroriMalCollege was organised on Sunday, 2nd February 2014 at Patel Chest Institute. Despite a slight delay in the proceedings, the speaker sessions interspersed with TED videos kept the audience engaged. The host for the day, Kunal Arora did a splendid job of keeping the participants entertained with his questions and timely jokes. The list of speakers included quite a few DU graduates like Lokesh Madan, Ankur Warikoo and Shifu Kanishka Sharma.

The first speaker to take the stage was Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, a highly acclaimed social reformer, accredited with the success of sanitation projects like the Sulabh International. During his talk titled ‘Restoration of Human Rights and Dignity of Untouchables’, he elaborated on the various endeavours and projects he has undertaken to make ‘untouchables’ a part of mainstream society.

After that, Lokesh Madan, a corporate executive turned musician told the audience his story; how he started singing at the age of four, formed a band right out of school, gave all that up for a corporate career, and finally found his way back to music! His love for singing and the guitar was clear from his expression while he played a short tune from one of the songs his band Eka, had composed. His last bit of advice was to combine a dream with an idea on how to market it and how to manage it financially. A perfect blend of idealism and rationality!

The next speaker, internet entrepreneur and CEO of Groupon India, Ankur Warikoo took the audience through a story from his personal life aptly titled ‘From Crutches to 21 kms’. His talk traced his journey from being bed ridden after getting a ‘freak disease’ in 2011 and then having to use crutches, to his decision of running in the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon in 2013. The message that he left the audience with was, that fear is self imposed-if we can create it, we can conquer it, too.

DSC_4510

Next to take the stage was Manit Rastogi an architect and School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) alumnus. His talk was centred on the concept of ‘The Architecture of Sustainability’, primarily talking about how, if buildings and structures are built correctly, they can be completely sustainable in terms of energy, water and electricity usage. He also talked about his proposed solution to many of Delhi’s problems (sewage treatment, pedestrian safety and pollution), all through design and architecture.

The session was followed by the screening of Harsh Bhogle’s TED talk on cricket in India. The video led to a discussion among the audience members regarding the effects of the IPL on the sport as a whole. Post the discussion, the group broke for lunch. Before the next set of speakers took the stage, Digvijay Singh from the KMC music society sang a Nusrat Fateh Ali song that was highly appreciated by the audience.

Next up, Dr. Sunil Mittal, a psychiatrist by profession, delved into the latest frontiers of neuroscience and shared concepts such as ‘shaping one’s mind and brain’ and Neuroplasticity, which proves that the brain develops all throughout the adult life.
Following him, Vaibhav Singh, a private equity professional delivered his talk on ‘How not to lose the ticket after winning the lottery’. It was an engaging presentation on the possibilities that India’s economy holds and how equity and capital can be channeled in a way that encourages growth.

Vinita Singh, the founder of We The People, talked about citizenship being a 24×7 job for all the citizens of a democracy like India. She equated the relation between citizens and politicians to one that is shared between employers and employees. In her words, ‘If they are doing a bad job, the main reason is that we are sleeping on ours!’

tedx1

The next speaker, Timothy Wildgoose, a photographer who’s come to India for a crowd funded photography and videography project, spoke about the power of connections, presence, yoga and meditation. He also made the audience laugh with his rather accurate guide on ‘How to thrive in India’.

The final speaker for the day, and in my opinion the most awaited one, Shifu Kanishka Sharma, took the stage.  A martial arts trainer, he is the only Indian to have trained at the Shaolin Temple. His talk was very interesting (and slightly scary too!) as he demonstrated some quick moves and attacks on stage. He touched upon a few key lessons of martial arts and spoke of his mission to teach women’s self defence in a practical and effective way in India.

The day finished on a high note with the Organising Committee taking the stage. ‘TEDxKirorimalCollege started as a dream and each attendee and speaker was a part of it. This has been the best experience of my life’, said Ashutosh Bhardwaj, the Curator and Organiser of the event. Pallavi Jain, a student of Hindu College said, ‘TEDxKMC was the second TED event that I have attended and it was a Sunday well spent. My favourite speaker was Ankur Warikoo who narrated a personal anecdote coupling it so simply with subtle humour and an amazing video!’

Image courtesy: Blessjess Photography

Keep Reading
By
News

Economics delegation from Delhi University attends SAESM in Lahore

By

A group of twelve students and five professors from the University of Delhi attended the 10th South Asian Economics Students Meet (SAESM) held at Lahore, Pakistan from 23rd to 30th December. This economic meet had an undergraduate students representation from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The entire event was divided into two halves. The conference and various competitions were held on the first three days, followed by a retreat on the next three. Political Economy in South Asia was the overall theme for this meet, conversely, there were six sub-themes. University of Delhi, Lahore University of Management Sciences, University of Kabul, Symbiosis School of Economics, Pune, St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and many more attended this event.

The students stayed in the Lahore University campus. The first day commenced with the national anthems of the seven South Asian countries being represented, which was followed by the opening ceremony- finally unraveling the 10th Annual Meet. Charvi Kain, LSR and Sambodhi Sarkar, St. Stephen’s College stood second in the quiz; Palaash Bhargava, KMC stood third in the Budding Economist and Chhavi Miglani from SRCC reached the final round for the Budding Economist.

Apart from leading the Indian delegation, Sambodhi Sarkar also won the Amartya Sen-Mehboob ul Haq Award. His paper on The Political Economy of Public Finance was deemed the best overall paper during the conference. Miranda House’s Amrita Garai won laurels for her paper on The Political Economy of International Trade as well.

Other students who represented the University of Delhi were Ishneet Kaur from KMC, Anuvinda PS from LSR, Manas Pathak and Jatin Bavishi of Ramjas College, Karan Kumar from DCAC, Stuti Oberoi of Miranda House and Ishita Asija representing IP College for Women.

After the hectic meet the students were taken for a day trip to Islamabad and for a short visit to the Harappan Valley. A professor of Lahore University also invited all students for lunch at his farmhouse.

The overall feeling by the students of India was that their image of Pakistan had changed and changed for the better. Charvi Kain said, “I felt as though Lahore was quite similar to New Delhi, the people were very warm and the experience had been quite enriching.” Whereas, Palaash Bharagava mentioned that he got to understand Political Economy way beyond the Indian way of learning. He even said that as Economics has various schools of thought, this event proved to be quite successful in making him understand different perspectives of Economics.

Keep Reading
By
Sounds

In conversation with Jester

By

Delhi University boosts of some strong alumni in every field be it dramatics, politics or even music. Being big on the music circuit, DU bands have exceptionally evolved and are stepping out of the University circle to perform and make it big. To get to you a band that’s struck chord not just within the University but also in other cities, is quite overwhelming with its humble beginning in a college’s music society.

With the release of their first album, Myths and Fables, this electronic/pop-rock band, Jester that was started off in the vicinity of Kirori Mal College, Delhi University in 2009 has become a brand and inspiration for many such upcoming bands to evolve and take it up as a thorough profession. The album offers some exceptional songs like ‘broken arrow’, Harquelin’,’ La questa’ which are my personal favourite. It is easily one of the most relatable albums off late, and freshly offers a new perspective to the indie listeners. The band line up- Dhruv Goel( vocals),Adityan Nayyar( vocals) Pranav Pahwa ( guitars), Akshay Dwivedi ( Bass) Shantanu Sudarshan ( Drums) and Harshit Jain ( Electronic Production and Keyboards). I recently caught up with them (considering their extremely busy schedule after the raving reviews of their maiden album) and got them talking about their DU days and life post-album.

9th

Give us a background of your band. Also, how did Kirori Mal College help you into shaping up the band that you are today?

Jester was formed in 2008,in the music society of Kirori mal college The band was formed at that time with no specific goal but to be the next Kmc college band .Initially we decided to play funk , which was appreciated quite well .We decided to take the band far more seriously after  coming third nationally at campus rock idols .

The band’s sound really evolved after the line-up became stable .So the Jester of today really came about when Akshay joined in 2009 and Adhir and Ronny left.

Bands these days are quickly following the international bands. Jester is influenced by?

Jester is influenced by many different genres of music .Each member brings there distinct taste to the band .The palette is really quite varied, we eventually started listening to everything by the end of it .A lot of the influence come from within our country not just from international bands.

Is it tough beating the conventional bands and carving a niche in today’s ever evolving music scene in India?

Well it is , if you do the formulaic route of playing shows and when your music is just an amalgamation of your influences .When we took the hiatus in 2011 , the real goal was to find out who we were and how individually we could contribute to something .As individuals I mean our interpretation of music rather than just our influences .By that point I think we all formed our opinions and individually had a sound .Which was then brought together .,The album according to us does not sound like anything else .So feel as though have created our own niche .

I don’t think we’ve ever looked at music as competition; conventional bands avante garde artists all have their place.

Considering it’s really critical for a band to get the necessary promotion or the stage for its take off, how did you go about it? Was it tough breaking out of the ‘DU band’ nomenclature?

By 2009 we were quite sick of the tag and all the competitions .We took part in a lot of them in 2008 and then focused on writing playing shows etc .We just played, we never had a marketing or promotion strategy per say. Those days all we did was played our music and somehow it worked.

The tough part was when we all got out of DU, it was as though we started our journey all over again that’s when we start thinking of band as greater than just the music .That is when the band became a brand .Now we promote it as such.

What’s your inspiration for the songs? Do you all pitch in?

Every song is written as a collective .Yes we all do pitch in .It usually takes us a year to get a new song down.

In the last couple of years music circuit has expanded in Delhi, in terms of fests, live gigs, performances in colleges, do you feel Delhi is coming up on the music scene and how is it different from other cities you’ve performed in?

Delhi has come a long way .Even though there has been a boom, there have been a lot of downsides .We were better paid when there were less gigs as well as the gigs were bigger. Delhi has now embraced the pub culture. Lots of gigs and many of them at places which cannot really support a live act .But there is blue frog , Hard rock cafe which are brilliant to play at .The Delhi crowd is really quite open to different music and the indie ,that’s what I think separates us from other cities .I think Mumbai is quite similar.

Tell us your favourite rock bands-in India and Internationally.

Rock I’m not sure of, but here it goes

Internationally –Extreme, tool, porcupine tree, Avishai Cohen, Aaron parks, Kurt Rosenwinkel. Harshit likes a bunch of EDM artists, sting etc

India- Zero, Advatia, Thermal and a quarter, October, Five 8.

Tell us about your DU days.

The DU days were fantastic. They were necessary for the band to grow, for our music to grow. The numerous trips really allowed us to be a band. It definitely gave us the exposure. Plus, college days are unforgettable. The fun we had, the pranks we played on each other backstage, on various fests and trips was just terrific.

Your album ‘myths and fables’ has been doing really well. In fact the ‘big bad wolf’ has become the anthem track. How has life been post- release, seeing the exceptional response Jester has been getting off lately?

It has been crazy, but good crazy. We’re getting a lot of show offers from outside the city. The reviews are a lot better than we expected. In fact what others albums strive to reach at.is what we’ve been getting.

About ‘Big bad wolf’. The song was our first single release and helped us get where we really are. It took us almost 1 year to write and conceptualise the song till its release but it was our hard work well paid off. It was written during our college days; in fact a lot of our songs are from the college days. But in totality it took us around 4 months to get the album out. And the response has been phenomenal.

When not jamming and creating music, what does Jester do?

We hang out at Pahwas. Jam because that just happens. It just happens we all are together most of the days of the week, even if not working together on a song. We chill, dig out old stories.

Lastly, how do you suppose upcoming DU bands who also want to follow the musical path should go about it?

Stop concentrating on shows, Get out there. Try coming up with their own music, it really helps you get the experience, gives you the edge from other bands considering g flocks of bands are flouting about the places. So much of free time college offers, utilize it. Make great music, even more just enjoy your time with music.

Keep Reading
By
Kirorimal College

KMC-CIC Team wins laurels at NASA Lunabotics 2013

By

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) organized the Lunabotics Mining Competition in which it challenged university level students to design and build a lunar excavator, known as a LUNABOT, that can mine on lunar surface. Kirori Mal College in collaboration with Cluster Innovation Centre, University of Delhi (whose Lunabot was on display at Antardhvani 2013) was one of the 50 International institutions invited to participate in NASA’s Fourth Annual Lunabotics The Mining Competition was held at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA from the 20th to 24th of May 2013. The KMC-CIC Lunabotics Team was one of the 12 exceptional teams whose Lunabot was successfully able to mine and dump the lunar simulant. It was the only Indian team to bring laurels to their country by winning two awards out of the five categories at the prestigious event. They won the second position for the outreach category as well as for Luna’s worldwide campaign category.

Dr. Sumitra Mohanty, Assoc Prof. Dept. of Physics was the faculty advisor of the team. The unflinching inspiration and support extended by her helped the team to scale to the projected heights. The team was led by Anubrata Saha a final year, B.Sc. (H) Physics student who the team described as the perfect leader who stays calm and refuses to give up even in the most difficult conditions. The competition was in relevance to NASA’s recently announced mission to find an asteroid by 2016 and then bring it to Cis-Lunar space; the technology concepts developed by the university teams for this competition conceivably could be used to mine resources on Asteroids as well as on Mars. KMC-CIC Lunabotics Team feels highly privileged to bring recognition to Delhi University and looks forward to continuing its engagement with NASA . It also aims to continue its winning streak at the NASA LMC 2014

Keep Reading
By