The University of Delhi (DU) owes its fames to the college societies, in part. Touted as the best platforms to skyrocket your explorations into your skills and art, every society maintains a paradigm to approve their novel associations. More often than not, these auditions turn out to be hysterical memories. Here we discover some of them.
Art is defined varyingly. Art is all about subjectivity and your ability to unravel exclusivity in monotony. Oscar Wilde captured it in his famous quote : “Life imitates art, or art imitates life.”
Our present discussion shall disgress from such ambiguity however, because our idea today is to revel in hilarity (as it should always be, in my not-so-humble opinion).
Now as we all know, life is as hilarious as hilarious gets (as mine is, always). Life is absolute conjecture in motion, a breathing being of uncertainty. And life is never a bed of roses (I wonder what that must feel like). Some people would tell you that art requires your life, in all its entirety. These people, you will find in large numbers in most of the Drama Societies around the varsity.
Drama Society auditions are usually borderline crazy, most us will agree. From being a chair or a generator to shouting your lungs out from the farthest corner of this world (the venue for auditions of course), DramaSoc auditions have no reigns. More often than not, these tasks prey on taboos. They require you to push yourself, to be as raw, as unabashed, as uncivilized as you can dare to be.
Having sex with a chair, sex in all its entirety – moaning and changing of positions expected; enacting masturbation in public or performing your best impression of any other carnal activity, these are just the first few tasks you are required to do.
As unexpected is the emotional and physical turbulence that you go through. 10 rounds of the college ground, 50 push-ups, planks for 5 minutes; the slouch in me shudders to hear these tales. Hysteria? Maybe.
Interestingly, the new recruits are forbidden to narrate their hysterical stories verging on humiliation to anyone. They are required to take them to the deathbed, but then, rants bring out the best in us.
But if you thought that only Drama Societies qualify for this contest of hysteria, you could not be more wrong!
As it is, the society auditions really vary according to the person who conducts them. When the interviewer is a skeptic, as was the one in a Literary Society, you can expect a question like – “Are you stoned?”- for just being your usual hip self. Hysteria travels from the candidate to the post holders too. One of the candidates in the same Literary Society heatedly claimed that being in the society was his lifetime fantasy, and that he do anything to get in. Another candidate heatedly entered into an argument with the President and discredited her merit by claiming her to be insufficient to judge his rightful claim (not worth) to be the only sensical member of the society.
Literature and Drama might well be deemed expected candidates in our hysterical readings, but wait for the next stories still.
In an audition for the Finance and Investment Cell in a college, a candidate having failed almost all the questions, was asked to teach any topic of his choice from Class 12 Accountancy Book. He did, and was surprisingly selected!
Most society members agree that the key to sure selection is your dynamic spontaneity. In this vein, the Debating Society of a college conducts its audition. 30+ existing members of the society question one candidate at a time. As questions fly in all directions, your only defense is your spontaneity. In another Debating Society, they called Mr. Ashok Srivastava, editor-in-chief, DD News, to their auditions, for no reason at all.
To conclude, probably a winner among disastrous auditions would be this one :
In a fashion society, a fresher auditioning for a model, dressed himself as Salman Bhai and danced to Main Aisa Kyun Hoon. It is easier to say that he had the last laugh, because the entire hall was hushed and traumatized by the end of it. He also challenged the unanimous decision to reject him.
And so they are, hysterical society auditions. And so they will be. Surely, these become stories we narrate to please ourselves, some years into a droll life. What is college if not hysteria, after all?
Feature Image Credits : DU Beat Archives
Kartik Chauhan
