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Kyun Na Maane Bura?

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The festival of colours is just around the corner and the country seems to be stocking up on colours and balloons already. A festival with a tagline such as “Bura Na Maano, Holi hai”, what could possibly turn into hooliganism, right? Wrong. Holi sees more than its fair share of rowdy-ism and some not-so-good moments. Here’s a list of the things that irk us mortals while the rest of the Indian populace rolls around in all sorts of stuff.

  1. Eve Teasing: Everyone knows it happens but they’re all too high with joy to put an end to it. It’s the perfect excuse for the not-so-friendly neighbourhood lecher to touch the pretty damsel he’s been eyeing for way too long at all the wrong places. If she protests, pat comes the reply, “Bura na maan, holi hai jaaneman”. It doesn’t help being surrounded by people who’re drunk on bhaang either.
  2. Bhaang Intoxication: That brings us to the next problem. It’s the one time during the year when you can be publicly intoxicated and nobody can say anything because well, “Holi hai, yaar. Aaj toh banta hai.”  And it’s no secret that ‘Bhaang’ stands for anything but just that. And that’s where the rowdy-ism exacerbates; people get into fights, wreck public property, the usual.
  3. The water balloons: Now, for those who’ve been at the receiving end of these, and most of us have at some point or the other, it’s been painful. But what’s more annoying is the fact that the onslaught starts well in advance of the festival and it tends to be indiscriminate. It could potentially ruin your entire day.
  4. Dirty Holi: It may be called the festival of colours but it isn’t just limited to colours. There are all sorts of stuff that are used ranging from eggs to mud and grease. And God knows that they just won’t come off.
  5. The sweet delicacies: Indian festivals are known for the awesome food that accompanies it. There has to be some incentive to tolerate all the annoying relatives, no? Holi is synonymous with the mouth watering Gujjias. Who can resist binging on them when there’s a platter laid out in front of you? But the reason they are on this list despite the shared love for them is because they don’t really let you forget the binging all that easy. ‘A moment on your lips, forever on your hips’, is that not what they say?
Photo Credits: cdn.memegenerator.net
Surya Rajappan
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Campus Central

Colloquium, The NSIT Debating Festival 2013- Schedule

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The schedule for Colloquium -The NSIT Debating Festival is ready! And it definitely promises to be a great Easter Weekend. 29 March (Day 1)

  • 9:30 a.m – 10:00 a.m. : Opening Ceremony and registration for all events
  • 10:00 a.m – 11:30 a.m. : Panel Discussion – Round Pegs in Square Holes – In the midst of easy jobs, fast money, posh lives, where dreams, goals, aspirations, wish fulfillments all topple over each other, many people get unknowingly trapped in the rat race for corporate jobs and conventional careers and are never able to take some time out to introspect and find what they are destined for. Having chosen to question the status quo, we at Colloquium 2013, want you meet some very ordinary people whose stories serve as a beacon for all to follow one’s dreams. The round pegs in square holes, Padma Bhushan awardee Dr. Mallika Sarabhai, bestselling author Mr. Ashwin Sanghi, notable social activist Ms. Kamla Bhasin and the renowned social worker Mr. Anubrotto Kumar Roy, popularly known as Dunnu Roy.
  • 11:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m : Netaji Subhas Memorial Debate (The Conventional Debate) – Colloquium’13 brings to you the centre stage of all debating events, here is your chance to battle it out in a fierce war of words to prove your point.
Cash Prizes Best Team : 4,000/- Best Speaker For : 2,000/- Best Speaker Against : 2,000/-
  • 12:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m : Author’s Isle – Session with Ashwin Sanghi – Come and meet from the man himself. Ashwin Sanghi takes the listeners through the exciting journey of his award winning novel ‘Chanakya’s Chant’ and his latest work, ‘The Krishna Key’.
  • 1 p.m. – 3:30 p.m : Literary Quiz – Attention to all the voracious readers out there. Now is a chance to encash your insatiable appetite for reading. The quiz is open to undergraduate & postgraduate students and the top three teams will win the prizes.
Cash Prizes First Team: 5,000/- Second Team: 3,000/-
  • 4 p.m. – 6 p.m : Comic Speak – “Growing up, all of us have had a fascination… for comics and cartoons.” Extending our pent up passion for comics, this workshop aims at exploring the nitty-gritties of the narrative works in which a story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art. We are proud to present, as the first speaker of this one of a kind event, none other than Pran Kumar Sharma, the leading pioneer of Indian Comics and the creator of ‘Chacha Chaudhary’, followed by Akshay Dhar of Comic Addicts fame.
30 March (Day 2)
  • 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m : NSIT Model UN (Day 1) – We are back with the second edition of the NSIT Model UN. The following four committees will be simulated.
General Assembly – VI Security Council Human Rights Council Shanghai Cooperation Organization
  • 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m : Joint Parliamentary Committee – Joint Parliamentary committee is an ad hoc committee of the Indian parliament investigating ongoing national issues of utmost urgency and importance. The participants will get an opportunity to simulate a JPC, represent a ministry, take a stand on the topic in question and debate to build viable solutions.
Cash Prizes Best Speaker: 5000/- First Runner-Up: 3000/- 31 March (Day 3)
  • 9:30 – 5: 30 p.m : NSIT Model UN (Day 2)
  • 10 a.m. – 2 p.m : Crack the Case – The participants will be presented with a predicament pertaining to an existing business. The team(s) that are able to present the most creative and effective solution to the problem, win the coveted title.
Cash Prizes Best Team: 10000/- Second Runner-Up: 4000/-
  • 2 p.m. – 3:30 p.m : Newshour Debate – This event gives you the chance to assume the role of an eminent personality and discuss a burning issue, pitching in your ideas and opinions.
Cash Prizes Best Speaker: 2000/- First Runner-Up: 1000/- Second Runner-Up: 500/-
  • 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m : Judgement Day – Say you were Hitler or Jack the Ripper, how would you defend yourself? Play one of these characters and save yourself from your doom.
Cash Prizes Best Speaker: 1000/- First Runner-Up: 600/- Second Runner-Up: 400/- Visit www.colloquiumnsit.org for more!]]>

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Delhi College of Arts and Commerce

Ecolympics 2013: Sports day with a twist!

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While Economics departments of other colleges go about organizing their departmental fests, Ecolibrium, the ecosoc of DCAC has come up with a new refreshing idea of`Ecolympics: sports day with a twist’ as they like to put it.

Ecolympics, to be held on 19th march, 10 am onwards in the grounds of DCAC seeks to bring together students, teachers and staff of the college for a fun filled day. With competitions like lemon race, tug of war, sack race, 3 legged race, taboo and 5 on 5 football, participants will not only get a chance to revisit and relive their childhood days but also a chance to win cash prizes worth Rs. 12000!!

The main attractions of the day however, will be the popular Paint Ball and the Segway. For those who don’t know, Segway is a two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery-powered electric vehicle and a fun ride.

To complete the day, there will be some good food too, to fill all those hungry stomachs after a day of jumping around.

In their attempt to make 19th a crazy and memorable day for the participants, Ecolibrium has received immense support and encouragement from their sponsors Jain art jewelers, Healthee.in, Sangeeta Bedi School of Economics and Math’s, DU beat, IATA Flight Center, Punjab sweet corner thy campus  and Spicy by Nature .

“We are expecting a participation of at least 150 people given all the excitement it has created among the students” Says Siddharth, Vice president, Ecolibrium.

Here’s a day dedicated to fun, freedom and of course spirit of sportsmanship spirit!

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DUB Speak

Delhi’s Autowallahs- Pioneering on Road Infotainment Since Time Immemorial

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We, Delhiites, have certainly travelled in autos at least once in our life. This is almost as certain as the autowallah charging you “Meter se 10 Rupai extra.” As students, rather, as DU students who are late to the first class almost every time, travelling by an auto is day-to-day business.

So what are the basics that make up for a mundane auto ride from point A to B? First and foremost, whether the autowallah is ready to ferry you to your desired destination or not; on a good day you’ll find a compliant guy in about 3 attempts. Secondly, is your chosen autowallah ready to go by the meter; if you are really adamant about it and it is your lucky day, you’ll end up riding a DTC. Thirdly, and the focus of the article is the socio- political issue that the autowallah would shed light upon in his choicest words. The autowallah’s banter maybe the simplest of rants about the traffic with a garnish of his favourite cuss words or a complex sometimes right wing sometimes left wing talk about the state of our polity.

So I shall now narrate 2 stories of interesting rides around the city.

The first incident happened when my professor of Indian Politics took an auto to go someplace, he didn’t mention where. So being the last person to act as a social pariah he started chatting up the autowallah and the stories the autowallah had to share were rather interesting. The autowallah came from a better than middle class household from a state in the Hindi speaking belt. He claimed to have had acres of land and decent amount of cattle to his name. Yes, even to my professor it struck as a rather odd thing for such a guy to be driving an auto in Delhi and he enquired as to what went wrong. So, our autowallah in question lost most of his assets because he had decided to stand for the local elections. He lost all his money in campaigning, and buying off voters which means most of his expenditure was on “dhols, dhotis and daaru”. Indebted as he was, to raise his head above the debt and to make a living, he now drove an auto on Delhi roads. Though one can still wonder if the expenditure on dhotis and daaru had gone down for him or not.

The second case in point is something that happened when I took an auto to get to college the other day. Not only did the autowallah go by meter he also slowed down and pulled up at the curb when he had to answer his phone! Who in this dammed city does that?! When I appreciated him for that action he went on and explained about how he always went by meter and never acted as a “bhaokhaanewala driver”. He also added that two of his sons were studying in leading engineering colleges in the country and as proof of his honesty he did not merely keep the change when I paid him, he returned me the exact amount of change adhering to what his meter said. His auto was famous and revered in the city, he said as he had the unique number plate that read ‘0002’. That was a rather refreshing start to my day since it did not include a game of What Price is Right with an autowallah.

This city has presented all of us such quirky travel tales. To the extent that in 1971, the then TOI Editor took a taxi from his office to get home and what the taxiwallah said, he reported the next day as an example of how delusionalMrs. Gandhi had the common gentry with her ‘GaribiHatao’ slogan. When he settled in the back seat the taxiwallah remarked, “Sahab election kebaadaapaagebaithna hum peechebaithenge.” Needless to say, both of them stuck on in the same seats even after the elections.

So it has been rightly said that if you want to tap the pulse of our city take a ride or two in an auto and make sure that you don’t sit back reading a book or listening to music cause the autowallah bhaiya has a lot to tell.

 

Anugrah Gopinath
[email protected] 

 

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Campus Central

Parampara 2013

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Every year, the Department of Mass Media and Mass Communication, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, organizes its annual media festival, Parampara. This year, PARAMPARA will be held from 28 February, 2013 to 5 March, 2013. Day 1 and Day 2: 28 February & 1 March, 2013 The festival started with On-the-Spot Filmmaking Competition, where student teams make their film in a span of two hours. These films will be then screened among an audience comprising of more than 300 film enthusiasts and judged on the basis of content and technical concepts. Day 3: 2 March, 2013 Day 3 includes various Inter-College Competitions like the VJ Hunt, Q-MAT (Quiz on movies, advertisements and Television)and Debate. These competitions invite students to rattle their brains, knock on their creative side and win attractive prizes. Day 4 and Day 5: 4 & 5 March, 2013: Day 4 starts with the inauguration of ‘FRAME POLITIK’, a photography competition cum exhibition, featuring both competitive and non-competitive sections. Students will be judged by esteemed jury members. This will be followed by the 9th edition of MISE-EN-SCENE, the annual International Students’ Film Festival. It includes the screening of movies made by students and judged by an esteemed jury. The resounding success of the last editions gave students an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the works of some noted filmmakers. In the past, we have screened movies by film makers like Mr.AnandPatwardhan, Mr.RohitShetty, Mr.Anand Gandhi, Mr.AnuragKashyap, Mr Mike Pandey and Mr. Anwar Jamal. This year, we are going to screen ‘Twittamentary’directed by Tan SiokSiok and ‘Beware Dogs’ by SpandanBannerjee. The college has previously had entries from colleges and universities both at the national and international level, including London Film Academy; School of Liberal Arts, Pakistan; Film School Zlin, Czech Republic; Hamburg Media School, Germany; Savannah College, United States of America; Film and Television Institute of India, Pune; L V Prasad Film & Television Academy, Chennai etc. Students’ films are screened in the long films and short films sections, in the fiction, non-fiction and animation sub-categories.  ]]>

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Campus Central

IP College Lit Fest- The Artist, Society and A Pinch of Heroin

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JFK once remarked in the pink of his health, “In free society art is not a weapon…. Artists are not engineers of soul.” Nonetheless, the two aspects function synergically. It may seem as a puerile analogy but an Artist is to the society what Tom is to Jerry; incomplete without one another. This is where Indraprastha College’s Literary Fest held on February 27, 2013 took off to explore new links between “The Artist and Society.” The starting hours witnessed the paper presentation competition which saw everything from the juxtaposition of Charles Dickens and Chetan Bhagat to the stereotypes about pornography. In the paper presentation, one of the topics, Censorship, controversy’s favorite child and the parasite that derives its strength both from an artist’s creation and society’s admonishment, was resounded in a new tone and as we all know, the worst part about censorship is **************. The Paper presentation competition was followed by a small spectrum of competitions: Poetry and Fiction Writing, the only time you had the liberty to claim that a bird was a human being or to explain how human emotions and snails are alike, Book-Jacket Designing as half of the world judges a book by its cover, and Crossword for teachers. The results are still awaited. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the creme de la creme segment of the Literary fest was the session with the guest speaker, Jeet Thayil of Narcopolis fame. Narcopolis, his debut novel, had been nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Fully game to sedate the audience in a lyrical fashion, Jeet Thayil began by reciting his poems. His reference to Jim Morrison and Horses Latitude easily owned some people. Subsequently, he read one sentence from his novel-a sentence that spanned six and a half pages. Jeet Thayil’s advice to budding poets was quite simple-“DON’T DO IT! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!” Lastly, he entertained questions of general as well as of personal nature from the curious lot and later signed the copies of his book before the session ended.Everyone was still in a daze after he finished because of the pinch of heroin he must have added to his words when no was looking.   Shreya Bharadwaj [email protected]]]>

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Campus Central

Harmony 2013: Day 3

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To Stephanians, the company of one another is absolute bliss that alleviates any spurt of boredom. As stereotyped as it may be reckoned, St. Stephen’s is a world of its own for the college dwellers who rejoiced in harmony in the entirety of the fest. Frequent showers of rain interrupted Day 3 of Harmony. However, this didn’t let down the spirits of the Stephanians and they kicked off with the day’s event with avidity. First event of the day was Scavenger’s Hunt, which saw huge participation. About 49 teams got registered for this fun trail. They were given a list of 48 items to be collected in 1 hour in which they could collect only 5 pictures in total for any item. Shreya, Siddharth, Anusha and Diksha battled out and managed to win this competition. Up next was FLAME {Fashion, Literature, Art, Music, Entertainment}, the Quiz that received a handsome response from quiz lovers and drilled them with some mindboggling questions. The students showcased their creativity with colors and brushes in a Texture Art competition. The topic given to them was “abstract” and students in large number painted their masterpieces. Sherlock Holmes drew huge crowds where a team of two {one impersonating Sherlock Holmes and the other as Watson} set to solve the murder mystery. All the teams were provided with a case study, which they were asked to solve in given time. Five selected teams who reached the finals were then allowed to interview suspects and witness the crime scene. “It was really very interesting, something different” shared of the participants. This was followed by Theatrics in the college hall. The aura of the college was very musical where songs were being dedicated by students to their fellow mates. Paintball and graffiti were also a welcome addition at the fest. Theatrics was conquered by Yang and Subodh, claiming the first and second position respectively. Giving way to sarcasm and exaggeration alike, Mocktaves gave vent to the mimicry talents of the students. Participants gathered to mock and imitate the extremely popular professors of the college who in satirical view had everybody rolling with laughter. Rahul emerged as the clear winner who with his extremely entertaining act had everybody in splits. Footloose was another event which commenced with a number of participants paired to rock to the tunes. Elimination after each thump rendered the top ten participants exulting in the glory and ultimately trying to oust each other. This by far was the most amusing event where everyone let their hair down.  The day concluded giving way to a rocking performance by the band Parikrama, preparations for which were in full swing.  

Sakshi Gupta ([email protected])
Poornima Kharbanda ([email protected])
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Campus Central

Literati

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Everybody has read Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in their childhood and all of us know about the seductive but murderous Count Dracula. All of us have also seen movies in which aliens invade the earth or aliens save the day. In short, Fantasy, which summarizes it all, was the theme of Gargi’s literary festival, Literati 2013, which was held on February 15. Since the theme itself was so versatile (including fairytales, science fiction, the gothic, romantic fantasy) the discussions initiated at the festival were equally diverse. One of the panel speakers Dr.Anuradha Ghosh discussed fairytales and folktales, how the word ‘fantastic’ carries different connotations in relation with the two and the connection between folktales and literature. Dr. Christel Devadawson, another speaker, drew our attention to ‘Portraiture’ in relation to Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. This mapped a discussion on Sir John Tenniel, the renowned caricaturist in Victorian England, as the illustrator of the Alice books and the politics of Victorian domesticity. The third speaker, Dr. Debjani Sengupta talked about the origin of science fiction after World War I. This was followed by a specific discussion on Indian science fiction, particularly Bengali science fiction where she discussed Leela Majumdar’s story Stairs. As the discussions ended we were forced to ask ourselves- “What is the real?” and “Who dreamed it?” Now “this is a serious question….” With such illuminating and thought provoking discussions, the day had just begun. What followed were Student paper presentations. The theme, being so interesting, the papers presented were all the more captivating. The topics ranged from the sexist representation of Wonder woman in the comic books and stereotypes of men in fairytales to a comparison of the Grimm brothers’ fairytales with the Walt Disney version. One of the papers tried to bring out the fantasy in Manto’s realistic short stories revolving around the world of a partitioned India which was really worth applauding. Spin a Yarn was the next activity which required the participants to weave a story around a sentence provided to them on the spot. It proved to be one of the most hilarious and interesting of all activities. Participants invented stories in which they fainted after smelling the fragrance of fresh fruits and one of them woke up to be a boy when paradoxically he was actually a boy. These generated fits of laughter among the judges, teachers and students. The activity really did give wings to the weirdest of our imagination! Twist the Plot was next on the line where the students were given the beginnings of two popular stories, Cinderella and Harry Potter, only to give the story and their genres a new twist. Book-Jacket designing was also organized to serve the creative instincts of the students. Cherry on the cake, this year’s Treasure Hunt surprised the students with its witty clues which tested both their general knowledge and presence of mind. “This year’s Literati will be the most memorable fest with its ‘fantastic’ ride” remarked a final year student of the college. The carnival ended on a high note where everybody had thoroughly enjoyed themselves and had explored their imagination to the fullest. After all what is the world but our imaginative invention? And the winners were: Paper Presentation     :       Anuj Gupta Spin-a-yarn                :       Chhavi, Nandita and Anuj Book-jacket design    :       Harshita Twist-the-plot           :       Anuj Gupta Treasure Hunt            :       Nidhi, Khushbu and Poorva

Shweta Sharma and Akshita Luthra

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