Indian Institute of Technology Delhi’s grand annual festival Rendezvous came to an end today.

The third day of Rendezvous 2019, the annual cultural fest of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) was a success, despite starting slow, owing to the venue recovering from the previous night’s rain.

The day saw many competitions conducting their finals and semi-finals. “Swar“, the classical solo singing competition conducted its finals, which had seven participants showcasing their vocal abilities and captivating the audience. The competition, which was organised by the Music Club, was being judged by Pundit Chethan Joshi. The competitors gracefully awed the audience.

Abdul Samad Kahan of Shaheed Bhagath Singh College and Shradha Singh of Hansraj College bagged the first position. Whereas the second and third positions were bagged by Rishab Raghuvanshi of Shaheed Bhagath Singh College, and Chinmaya Iyer of Kirori Mal College respectively.

Simultaneously, the seminar hall saw talented dancers grooving to the beat with individual performances, entertaining the crowd with their dance moves.

The “Pop Battle” which was being judged by Nidhish Pandey had nearly 200 participants, with back-to-back competitions involving various western dance genres under the pop culture.

The dramatics society of IIT-D conducted the prelims for “Natika Vatika”  a multilingual stage theatre competition with prominent judges like Ashok Nagar and Rejneesh Gautham. These plays dealt with various social issues like corruption and the philosophy of life.

Mr and Miss Rendezvous (RDV’19) was filled with spirited faces eager to display their talent and personality. From over 80 entries, 24 participants were shortlisted for Mr and Miss RDV. Out of these 24 entries, 14 were present for the event. The event was judged by the famous Instagram influencers, Stefy Gupta, and Raghav Gogia. The first round consisted of a ramp walk, where the contestants put their best foot forward, literally. The shortlisted candidates from those were then asked to showcase their talent. The six final shortlisted candidates were then asked questions by the judges. The title of Mr RDV was won by Siddhartha Dayani and Miss RDV was won by Tarushi Anand. The judges had asked Dayani what his biggest accomplishment was in the judge question round to which he replied, “My biggest accomplishment has been leaving home and coming to Delhi. I was a mama’s boy at home but now I live on my own which I think is great.”

As young men and women were competing in one of the auditoriums to be the idol of Rendezvous’19, young women were competing in the hall right above to be the Campus Princess. The competition was conducted by the Miss India Organisation and was judged by Viren Barman, Peter England Mr India, 2016 first runner up, and Siddhi Gupta, FBB Colours Femina Miss India, Uttarakhand 2019. From over 180 registrations, there were 62 selected for the competition. The first round was a ramp walk round, where the contestants had to walk in pairs of two. The second round was an introduction round, where the contestants introduced themselves, and the last round for the shortlisted candidates was talent round. The contestants came from different backgrounds, with future lawyers, engineers and even airforce officers present. They were all dressed in black cocktail dresses and looked ready to light up the ramp.

“Allegro” was the Western Group Singing Competition organized by the Music Club of IIT-D. The preliminary round was online where colleges had to send in a video of their performance. From 30 online entries, 12 were shortlisted for the finals on 4th October. The competition saw music societies of various colleges singing beautiful mashups. The competition was judged by Joshua Peters, a western classical music maestro, and Nirupan Sinha, a Delhi based singer-songwriter and composer. After a tough musical battle, Echo, the Western Music Society of Jesus and Mary college stood first. Euphony, the Western Music Society of Gargi College and the Western Music Society of LSR were the first and second runners up, respectively.

Day three also saw the reputed IIT Delhi MUN, where students came as delegates and put their diplomacy skills to use.

Apart from these, there were quizzes and games going on all over the campus. From quizzing enthusiasts racking their brains in the Open Numbers Quiz and Conjurors Bout. SPIC MACAY, an organization for the promotion of Indian classical music and culture, also organised Bharatnatyam and Madhubani Painting workshops.

Conjuror Bout, a word game event was also held. The game ignited the literary gene in all to crack questions based on word jumbles, meaning and literary references. Participants received a question paper, and were given 1 hour and 30 minutes to find the answers. They were given rough sheets and stationary to answer the questions.

The event witnessed bibliophiles, literature enthusiasts and poets all throughout the Delhi circuit with their friends, teaming up to answer questions on British Literature, pop culture references, and solve jumbled words through their meaning.

The four-day long IIT Delhi’s fest, Rendezvous ended on a spectacular note on October 5, 2019. A day full of events and performances from every spectrum of life found its way in the four captivating days of the event. 

The final day begun with a plethora of events that happened simultaneously ranging right from the debates to performing arts.

One of the key highlight events of the day, ‘Instrumental Impromptu’ saw participants from all colleges who presented their mesmerising melodies for the audience. The judge of the event was Mr. Vinayak Panth who has been playing the Sitar for the last fifteen years and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He was awarded the CCRT Scholarship by the Government of India and has been a part of various ensembles, sub-collections and Anirudh Varma Collective, amongst others. 

With each performance, the audience was hooked to the beats produced, from various instruments such as the Sarangi, to the drum set. Out of the ten teams that participated in the event that turned out to have an intense competition, Nabeel Khan from Zakir Hussain College won the first prize, Saarah Roy from Daulat Ram College won the second prize, and Saksham and Sarthak from SGTB Khalsa College bagged the third position in the event.

The events began at 9 a.m. Debutant- IITD’s vigorous debating competition- came to an end with Gargi College bagging the first prize, followed by Lady Sri Ram College, and Hansraj College. 

Quizzing whizzes battled out their wits in the India Quiz Competition as well as the General Quiz later in the day, at Rendezvous, which was conducted at the Lecture Hall Complex, with questions varying from Pop Culture-  Music and Entertainment- to History and Science, sensitising the participants as well as the spectators.

Belly Dancing event saw a wide range of cheerful spectators. The performers showcased their impressive dancing skills, making the crowd thrilled with excitement. However, a few spectators raised objections to the lewd nature of the audience’s perspective. “The majority of audience saw the event not as an art form, but rather a way to get cheap thrills. It degrades the participants,” a spectator commented. The general ambience too, was more of a way of objectifying rather than appreciating the dance form. Yet, the participants were energetic and well-rehearsed, and set the stage on fire. The first prize was bagged by Shivani Gupta, and Muskaan Singh bagged the second position.

Duo Dance event witnessed scintillating performances by dance duos from the entire Delhi Dance Circuit.

The biggest highlight of the competition was liberalisation in terms of dance forms and dance types which paved way for diversity and Versatality among dancers.

All performances ranging from Bhangra, Kathak and Bollywood displayed their dance routines.

Members of Spardha, Dance Society of Shaheed Bhagat Singh College came first in tie with Angat. The second position was banged by Athak and Kathak.
The special mention was bagged by Phulkari and Adrita.

Monoact provided the grandeur that IIT Delhi’s Rendezvous needed to come to an end.
The event was filled by artists from all over DCTC i.e. Delhi Collegiate Theatre Circuit.

Monoact which works on the principal of one actor in one scene, stood alone to set the mood for last day of Rendezvous.

The beauty of art is to be an anecdote of emptiness of existence in the society, and the many monoacts performed on pressing issues like lack of choice, lack of sexual preference, domestic violence and patriarchy raised necessary conversations.

Echoes, the Western Solo Singing Competition was also conducted at LHC at 1 p.m.  The event drew a heavy crowd of music lovers. There were 11 participants, all from various colleges and universities. The participants were allowed to either sing solo, or with an accompanist, and the singers were joined by pianists and guitarists. The competition was extremely subjugating in its aura- with the singers entertaining with high notes and vibratos. The first prize was bagged by Dattatreya Biswa, from Deen Dyal Upadhyay College. The second and third position went to Rashim Anand from Daulat Ram College and Janhavi Rajaram from Delhi Technological University respectively.

Another interesting event was FAIL! Initially the idea of this event was conceptualized in Massachusetts Institute of Technology to bring out stories of successful people who have come so far after facing many failures in their life. IIT held a desi edition where celebrities  including Rajat Sharma, Sudhir Chaudhary, Laxmi Agarwal, Sharad Sagar and Captain Raghu Raman addressed the audience with their inspiring life stories.

The event started with a captivating speech by acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal. Laxmi suffered a barbaric acid attack at the age of 15 and came out as a warrior. She started a campaign called Save Sale Acid and has never looked back in her life. She talked about her journey post the incident very modestly. Laxmi’s speech was followed by a video conferencing with Sam Pitroda. A telecom engineer by profession, Sam is considered to be the pioneer of hand held computing in India. He talked about his humble family background, friendship with Rajiv Gandhi, contemporary politics in India over other things. While there was a connectivity problem initially because of technical glitches he took a jibe saying what an irony it is to face such technical glitches in an institute like IIT. His brief address was followed by Sudhir Chaudhary who organically took the audience by his presence. He spoke about his life, his profession and the nationalism that he preaches. Acknowledging the humble response that he gets in IIT he said there’s another university in affinity just about 5 kilometres away where he never gets such overwhelming welcome. He implicitly referred to JNU with which he shares a controversial relationship because of the 2016 JNU Sedition case.

Captain Raghu Raman appeared next. His quirk and unconventional ideas about life enthralled the audience. The second journalist in this event’s list was Rajat Sharma,  editor in chief of India TV. Keeping himself apart from other speakers he held a rather interactive session asking questions from the audience for the majority of his speech. Event was concluded with a speech by young and dynamic Sharad Sagar, who heads the Dexterity Global foundation.

The final day was a melange of events right from the ones of competition and team spirit to the ones which fuelled up the people around. 

With an energetic and captivating performance, the famous dance group MJ5 had the crowd shimmying along with the members of the group to the tunes of famous Hindi and English numbers!

In what could be best defined as the perfect conclusion to a four-day relay of events and performances, Amit Trivedi and band had hundreds of people swooning and crooning to the exuberant tunes of his songs.

The unified and synchronised coordination between the band members reflected the positivity of their music. With this unforgettable rendition of a timeless musical experience, Rendezvous 2019 came to a grand end.

Feature Image Credits: Surbhit Rastogi for DU Beat.

Satviki Sanjay 

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Stephen Mathews

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Chhavi Bahmba

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Shreya Juyal

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Amrashree Mishra

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Priyanshu 

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Shivani Dadhwal

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Kartik Chauhan

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