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Sahiba Chawdhary

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Coldplay released their sixth studio album, “Ghost Stories” after pre-release promotional hit singles; “Midnight”, “Magic” and “A Sky Full of Stars”, via Altantic Records on 19th May, 2014.

Co-produced by the band with Paul Epworth along with Mylo Xyloto fame producers, Daniel Green and Rik Simpson, the album is almost a concept record that revolves around the idea of one’s past haunting one’s present and future and linking it to the media-hyped “consciously-uncoupled” Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The album starts with distinctly muted variations and Coldplay’s patented Guy Berryman-Jonny Buckland mesh of echoing guitar with “Always in my head”. The beat of melancholy hit the strings of your heart when Chris breaks the sonic background with his soft lyrics, “I think of you, I haven’t slept” and bam! You know this is going to be the break-up album of the season.

You jump to “Magic” with an abrupt ending, and suddenly you begin to hear beats of drums warmly mixed with gentle guitar and weightless piano drifts. With that you sink into “Ink”, a not so cheerful track with soft beats, flawless keyboard and piano swirls. With deep lyrics, “All I know is that I love you so, so much it hurts”, the song moves in a flow towards emptiness of losing the spark where he tries to hold on to what is lost, so much; it hurts.


With Timbaland on board, “True Love” is a doleful song where Chris pours his heart out by saying, “Tell me you love me, if don’t then lie to me” with Will Champion’s soft-drum intervals while symbolizing his failing marriage. The song comes across as a perfect attempt to delineate the slithering pain of piercing heartbreak by coming to terms with all that is lost while telling a tale of lonely love holding on a thin string of hope.

“Midnight” comes as a chilly shocker with clicking piano, shifting bass pad, and no immediate center to the lyrics. The not-so Coldplay song has some excellent electro cues courtesy, “The Fourth State II” by Jon Hopkins and undeniable “robo-teched” voice of Martin throwing light on the of the darkness of pain.

“Another’s Arms” breaks with synth guided minor key melancholia with sweet chorus and lyrics portraying bonafide couple habits with “Late night watching Tv/Used to be here beside me/Used to be your arms around me/Your body on my body”. The song also incorporates a vocal sample from “Silver Cord” by Jane Weaver, which adds true love to the pain and an unsaturated optimistic wave to hold on to the broken pieces giving an accurate depiction of misery.

“Oceans” is the album’s acoustic track with guitar strings of sorrow and pain of rejection. Chris through this track comes in terms with his genuine “Ghost Stories” of rejection and the lonesome path ahead.

He ends the track by consoling his broken heart with reassuring lyrics, “Got to find yourself in this world”.

“A Sky Full of Star” marks the band’s first raving dance track outlined with EDM influences, emerging an energetic, heartfelt piano ballad in perfect composition with pounding electronics. It gives the album a different twist and shows that everything is not about Chris and Gwyneth. However, the lyrics seem to declare Chris’s undying love, where he doesn’t seem to care “if she tears him apart”. Irrelevant of the lyrics, the song brings pumps to the album making a happy drive back home (on the highway of life.)

“O” concludes the album on a positive note with them typical Coldplay soothing piano ballads hoping that “maybe one day I’ll fly with you”. The song ends the album as a perfect consoling track showing light in the end of the dark tunnel of rejection and hurt. Chris’s heartfelt lyrics, ask you to “Fly on” more like asking you to “Carry on” while solacing from heartache. It puts an end to the emotional treadmill with commiserating melody oozing compassionate optimism.

Ghost Stories emerges a transitional album, full of sonic details, sad girl echoes and beats of ‘Magic’ and ‘Ink’. The deep lyrics, echoing guitars, sudden electronics and the same old acoustic piano ballads bring out the usual and the unusual Coldplay in 9 tracks and 43 minutes.

Amidst all, the album stays committed to the sentiment of dying love while battling with ghosts of broken relationships with sanguine lyrics asking Chris, “And if you were to ask me/After all that we have been through/Still believe in magic? He replies by resisting the ghosts of his past with, “Ofcourse, I do!”

TRIVIA: Apple and Moses Martin appear as guest vocalists on the final track O! Getting their first vocal break on their parents break-up album, maybe isn’t a very good idea?

The album cover for Ghost Stories is etched by Czech artist Mile Furstove, featuring a pair of angel wings imposed onto a painting of an ocean under a sky at night. The images include a couple in love, a man facing a mission, a flight of white doves, amongst other imagery depicted in the artwork.

Kirori Mal College’s Annual Fest, Renaissance ’14 was organized from 3rd March to 5th March. This year, the fest featured leading performers including Mika Singh and the popular metal band Parikrama, formed in this very college years ago. Here is a look at all major events of the three day fest:

DJ Night

Scheduled for the opening night of the fest, the DJ Night was hosted by DJ Akansha Popli of MTV Splitsvilla fame and DJ Monty.

Mika Singh

Renaissance ’14’s highlight was the star performance by Mika Singh, that attracted audience from the entire university. On this, Jashvender Chauhan, President Student’s Union remarked, “We worked really hard to put together Renaissance ’14. We are happy for the positive and energetic response from all. Mika’s star night was a major hit and I am happy that the crowd had a good time!”

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Students’ Union President Jashvendar Chauhan with Mika Singh

Parikrama

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Renaissance ’14 ended it’s three day festival on the band night with a performance by Parikrama.

Before Parikrama, the evening was opened by Alice Rose, a singer from UK, followed by KMC’s fusion band, “Aandolan” and Aadhya, a local Delhi band. They performed on diverse numbers prepping the crowd for the final performance by the KMC Alum rock band, Parikrama.

Winners’ Tally

Western Dance Competition

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The Western Dance competition was conducted in the football grounds with the participation of 12 teams. Teams were judged by Manju Sharma, one of top 18 finalists of Dance India Dance; Harendra Singh who has choreographed at various Delhi University colleges and Yogendra Singh from Danceworx.

First position: IIT Delhi
Second position: Lady Shri Ram College for Women and Sri Venkateswara College.

Choreography competition

First position: Lady Shri Ram College For Women

Fashion Show

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First position: Lady Irwin College

For more, there is always our Facebook album!

Lady Shri Ram College For Women is set to begin their Academic Congress titled “Genderknowledge: Understanding Gender: Questions of Justice and Freedom” on 5th, 6th and 7th of March 2014.

The academic congress started its buzz with “Pre-Academic Congress” events and workshops conducted by various departments of the college.

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Body Image Workshop at LSR

Mirror on the Wall: Am I the Loveliest of them All?
Dr. Kanika K Ahuja, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Lady Shri Ram College for Women conducted a body image workshop, ‘Mirror on the Wall: Am I the Loveliest of Them All?’on 28th February as a pre-event to the academic congress.  It was an experiential workshop that challenged popular notions of beauty and the ideal body. A striking feature of the workshop was the Mirror Assignment, which required the participants to stand in front of a mirror, observe themselves and write down at least 6 positive qualities about themselves. In the words of Neha Yadav, a second year student, “It made me appreciate those qualities that I normally don’t care enough to notice.”

One Directional Woman and the Feminization of Labour
Dr Nandini Chandra, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Delhi University, in her session titled, ‘One Directional Woman and the Feminization of Labour’, succeeded in giving a new perspective to feminism. Quoting from important Hindi texts like ‘Naukar ki Kammez’, she expressed the power dynamics that earlier worked, and still prevail in the bourgeois Indian families. In a society that exploits both men and women, she discussed how men are counted as ‘living labours’, with specified working hours and holidays while the women are treated no more than ‘dead labours’, machines that have to work endlessly. This was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Dr. Chandra engaged with the students and faculty.

Workshop on Sexuality
The Political Science Department hosted a workshop on “Sexuality” on 1st March. The workshop was conducted by CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action), which is a feminist-human rights organisation based in New Delhi. It is one of the few international women’s rights organisations based in the global South, led by Southern feminists, which works at the grassroots, national, regional, and international levels. The workshop focused on the sexual and reproductive rights of women and investigated the links between sexuality, rights, gender and health and their interface with socio-cultural and legal issues.

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Image Credit: Meenakshi Pahuja

Other academic congress pre-events include a “Self Defence Workshop” a five day workshop facilitated by the Delhi Police and Ms. Meenakshi Pahuja from 3rd-7th March. On the workshop, Ms. Pahuja says, “The purpose of this workshop is to empower young women especially those who travel alone in Delhi. Our aim is to emancipate women to at least help protect themselves if they are unable to help others.”

On 3rd March, the Journalism and Mass Communication Department organized an interactive session with women journalists of “Khabar Lahariya”, an Indian newspaper published in certain rural dialects of Hindi, including Bundeli and Awadhi. This session was facilitated by Nirantar, which trains and provides ongoing support to rural women journalists publishing the Khabar Lahariya newspaper in local languages.

Khabar Lahariya
The Journalism department hosts a session with women journalists of Khabar Lahariya.

The pre-congress event schedule also boasts of a creative touch to the conference with “Occupy Wall Street” where we will display graffiti art work of the students on the theme of the congress.

With that the pre-events came to end on 4th March with parallel sessions of a special lecture by Professor Jayanti Ghosh on ‘Gender and Globalization’, screening of Jai Bhim Comrade’ followed by discussion with Anand Patwardhan and ‘Paper Presentation on Gender and Sports’ by Meenakshi Pahuja.

Jayanti Ghosh concluded her talk stating, “I always enjoy coming to Lady Shri Ram College. It is always nice to interact with an intelligent bunch of girls who make me feel positive about the future.”

Patwardhan’s analysis of caste on the other hand helped reflect the gendered caste nature setting a theme for the “GenderKnowledge” with special mentions like the brutal Khairlanji Rape Case.

Bilingual knowledge was also witnessed with a Special Lecture by Dr. Kanchana Natrajan on “The Question of Gender in Hindi Literature” giving a perfect prelude to the academic congress.

The pre-events ended with the declaration that the United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon will be sending his message of solidarity through Ms. Kiran Mehra-Kerpelman, Director of the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) tomorrow for the Gender Congress on the occasion of International Women’s Day!

The Psychology Department of Lady Shri Ram College For Women organized a body image workshop, “Mirror on the Wall: Am I the loveliest of them all” on 28th February as a pre-event for their upcoming Gender Knowledge Academic Congress 2014.

The workshop was conducted by Dr. Kanika Khandelwal, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at LSR with the theme of challenging popular notions of beauty and the ideal body.

The workshop started with the introduction of startling facts and findings neglected by students on a daily basis. It involved a stirring debate on how media has redefined beauty with Photoshop and airbrush, followed by participants collectively defining the thin ideal. This led to critical discussion on the origin of the thin ideal, how it is perpetuated, the impact of messages about the thin-ideal from family, peers, dating partners, and the media, diet, weight loss and fashion and who benefits from the thin-ideal.

The focus was to highlight how media defines beauty, love and romance for us. The stimulating discussion brought to the fore how the media portrays an unrealistic ideal of perfection.

This was followed by the “Mirror Assignment” which required the participants to stand in front of a mirror, observe themselves and write down at least 6 positive qualities about themselves which included physical, emotional, intellectual, and social qualities. It turned out to be a ‘feel good’ activity with responses of beautiful nails to sexy butts!

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On this, Neha Yadav, a second year psychology student quotes, “It made me appreciate those qualities that I normally don’t care enough to notice.”

The second activity that followed was a filling up a ‘verbal challenge’ form. It involved counter answering the statements related to popular notions of beauty and ideal body, which one encounters on a general basis. The most interesting one was, ‘My neighbor said, “You should always wear heels. You are short and that takes away from your looks” was countered with a satirical response like “And all this time I thought you needed to grow up!”

The workshop ended with reverberations of the pledge, “I can and I will…” According to Shuchi, a second year student participant, “The workshop was an eye-opener. It made me realize for how long I have been under-estimating myself. It helped me explore the origin of thin ideal, its costs, and challenge personal body concerns.

Psychology Department Union quotes, “It was a successful workshop, and we thank Dr. Khandelwal for helping us celebrate beauty and making it a fun-filled enriching event. It is indeed a perfect prelude to Academic Congress on the theme ‘Gender knowledge’!

For more upcoming pre-academic congress events follow their Facebook page.

Yamini Bhagat
Charul Katiyar

Image credits: Disha Kanojia

The Philosophy Department of Miranda House is all set to organise their annual festival “GNOSIS” powered by “Luxury Connect Business School” on 28th February. The fest is centralized on the theme “The Ethics and the Green Footprints”.

GNOSIS 2014 is an initiative to help create Green Awareness and spread awareness for maintaining the ecological balance and moving in a greener direction.

 

The program will commence at 10:00 am with a talk by the following speakers:

– Dr Pragati Sahani, Faculty, Department of Philosophy

– Ms Pallavi Agarwala, Environment Activist, Daily Dump

The talk will be followed by four competitive events with exciting prizes worth Rs 20,000 to be won:

– Perspective, The Debate Competition

-Time and Tune, The Indian Music Group Competition

-Latitude, The Photography Competition

-Phoenix, The ‘Kabaad se Jugaad’ Competition

For further details, visit the festival’s facebook page.

Nikhil_Passport_Size_PictureNikhil Pandhi from St. Stephens College recently received the Rhodes scholarship, one of the most prestigious international graduate scholarships in the world.

Along with coverage of the university and college fees at Oxford, the recipient of the scholarship also receives a monthly maintenance stipend to cover accommodation and living expenses that is funded by the Rhodes Trust. Although all scholars become affiliated with the residential college while at Oxford, they also enjoy access to Rhodes House, an early 20th century mansion with numerous public rooms, gardens, library, study areas and other facilities.

 

 

You recently received the Rhodes scholarship. I’m sure that must be really exciting! Tell us about what motivated you to apply?

Quite honestly, I had always heard about the Rhodes but when I figured that my college seniors had applied for it when I was a fresher, it seemed a lot more possible and doable. I saw that I had coincidently accumulated several extra curricular activities with a fairly good academic score that further motivated me to apply. I also thought that Rhodes is an excellent scholarship for somebody who is interested in academic and research particularly. Being somebody who is, I thought it would be good to give it a shot.

What was the procedure?

The procedure is an online application that opens on 1st July. The online application contains of your personal details, a statement of purpose and letter of recommendation.

How did you prepare for it? Any tips for aspirants?

The Statement of Purpose is the most important point of your application in which you need to be really sure of which course you are applying for and why you are applying for it. In order to draft the Statement of Purpose you need to be really sure about what you are writing and deconstruct yourself in way to portray your strengths.

How was your final interview?

I’m always the one who prepares for the interview and not leave it to luck and chance. You need to be thorough with your SOP because at the end of the day the SOP is the fulsome of the interview as whatever they ask is you is more or less based on the SOP.

Having said that, one needs to be aware of not only what you want to do at Oxford but also how it will be relevant to modern day South Asia, as you will be representing your country at Oxford. You need to be aware of theoretical dimensions; debates and controversies around your field and you need to brush up on your own abilities and strength. In the final interview they assess your understanding of the course, your ambitions and aims.

How much importance is given to academic achievements in the application?

Academics are important, but at the same time importance is given to your extra curricular activities, sports and leadership initiatives. I believe that they are not looking for a particular thing but for an overall profile.

What gave you an edge over the other contestants?

I think it was my interest in fields that haven’t been explored widely. Like, I taught myself an East African language “Kiswahili”; I founded the poetry society of my college; I’m trained in Indian Classical Music and I play tennis and badminton regularly. They are looking for somebody who has demonstrable leadership abilities in different realms supported by a good academic record with an equally balanced extra curricular. Also my first book of poetry, “Derelictions” is out too!

Which course are you planning to study at Oxford?

I’ll be studying Archeology at Oxford. I want to be a historian/archeologist with a particular focus on South Asia, Africa and the Indian Ocean while continuing in academia and research so that I can particularly contribute towards the study of regions of history that have not been studied traditionally.

Now that you have this brilliant opportunity, how do you plan ahead?

The MSc is a one-year course and then I plan to apply for the MPhil and follow research with DPhil so that I can teach and continue my research independently. The Rhodes covers a minimum of two years of your education and based on your academic records it is extendable to your third year as well.

Nikhil is currently studying History and has won the Westcott Memorial History Prize, the Ranjit Singh Goel Memorial Award as well as the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Undergraduate Scholarship. We wish this multifaceted student the best for his future endeavors!

For more information about the Rhodes Scholarship, click here.

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.

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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.”

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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

St. Stephen’s Spic Macay organized an Indian history and culture quiz called ‘Sanskriti’ on Tuesday, 4th February at the seminar room of St. Stephen’s College.

The quiz started with a bang with over 12 online registrations and 17 on spot registrations. Teams were registered with a maximum of two members.

The prelims consisted of 20 questions. Ishaan Taneja and Deepak Kumar, students pursuing science from Stephens conducted the quiz. With the cut off score of 10 points for selection, 8 teams were selected for finals.

With a rigorous final round, Prakriti and Adithya representing Sri Venkateshwara College emerged as winners taking home cash prize of Rs. 2500. The cross college team of Vasant from Kirori Mal College and Bishal from Ramjas College bagged the second prize worth Rs. 1500.

Gagan Mahajan, Co-ordinator Spic Macay quoted, “This was the first quiz organized by Spic Macay of our college and turned out to be a success!”

The Hindi Sahitya Sabha, the oldest society of Shri Ram College of Commerce is organizing its annual national fest “Spandan 2014” from 27th to 30th January’14.

The fest embarks its history by collaborating with the National Archives of India to organize an exhibition of manuscripts. It also brings in attraction for participants with competition prizes up to Rs. 6 lakhs.

The event will begin with an inauguration ceremony followed by events: an extempore ‘Gagar Me Saagar’ and ‘Khajane ki Khoj’, a treasure hunt to find out how spontaneous and reflexive one can act.

Day 2 will consist of ‘Kahaani Buno’, a story telling competition, ‘Samuhik Paricharcha”, a group discussion and a poetry writing competition titled, “Kalam Se Pratiyogita”.

Akshay Singhania, President Hindi Sahitya Sabha says, “We have themed our events to explore the talent of youth by giving them the opportunity to put forward their ideas and expressions.”

The events scheduled for day 3 are “Vaad Vivad Pratiyogita”, a conventional debate competition and a team competition of “Antakshri”.

On the last day, 30th January’14 the society will unleash one of the most awaited events “Kavi Hun Main” providing a platform for unrecognized poets to exhibit their talent. The fest will conclude with the prize distribution ceremony for the winners and participants of the various competitions.

Event Schedule:

Day 1

10 a.m. : Inauguration Ceremony
12 p.m. : An Extempore -“Gagar Me Saagar”
3 p.m. : Treasure Hunt “Khajane Ki Khoj”

Day 2

10 a.m. : “Kahaani Buno” – Story Telling Competition
12 p.m. : “Samuhik Paricharcha” – Group Discussion
3 p.m. : “Kalam Se Pratiyogita” – Poetry Writing Competition

Day 3

“Vaad Vivad Pratiyogita” – Debate
“Antaakshri”

Day 4

“Kavi Hun Main”

The National Science Fest at St. Stephen’s College began with the ‘Inaugural Ceremony’ at 2 pm on 24th January. Principal Rev. Dr. Valson Thampu inaugurated the event with a motivational speech encouraging the young science students to strive for the best, followed by a screening of National Science Fest 2014 official video.

Dr. Patrick Dasgupta, presently a professor at Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi, in a NSF Talk, spoke about the fundamentals of black holes, be it Schwarzschild radius or Hawking Radiation. Known for his work in the field of gravitational waves, quasars and cosmology he went on to present the ‘Information Loss Paradox’ associated with black holes. The talk was followed with a question-answer session where the members of the audience, varying from undergraduate students to research scholars, interacted with Dr. Dasgupta. After Dr. Dasgupta’s talk, the triathlon of events began at various venues of the college with the Paper Presentation event in Room A, Debugging Electronicz event at the New Physics Lecture Theatre (NPLT) and a talk on “The Fascinating World of Chemistry” by Dr. Subho Mozumdar, a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry at University of Delhi.

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‘Debugging Electronicz’ was based on the idea of testing the participants’ interest and expertise in electronics, and their capability in debugging flawed electronic circuits. It led to an intense final between the two best teams on an actual large circuit, basically a convoluted Adder circuit, where the finalists had to find out the flaws inherent in the realized circuit. Finally, in an all-Stephanian final, Ankit Dhanuka and Motaram clinched the first position, while Abel and Ojasvi received the second prize.

Along the main corridor, in Room A, the paper presentation competition took off with 15 student entries from all over the country belonging to various courses of study. Sahil Mathur, student of Information Technology & Mathematics at the Cluster Innovation Centre (CIC) earned the top spot for his paper on “Developing Genetic Algorithm inspired intelligent routing protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks”. The second prize was shared by Raktim Sen and Manasij Pal Chowdhury of Stephen’s and an individual entry by Deepto Mozumdar.