Ullas 2014 Archives - DU Beat - Delhi University's Independent Student Newspaper

As a young girl living in an urban metropolitan, sexism couldn’t possibly be starker to me. I see it leeching on my body when I leave the house, I see it in the eyes of the men staring at me on a bus, I can feel it making me conscious of my body every day, every second. But something about the entire Hard Kaur fiasco during Kamala Nehru College’s ‘Ullas’ showed me how sexism is so internalized in our systems, our minds, our lives – in a manner that spotting it becomes hard, even in the midst of controversy, where each detail is made to glare right into our faces.

Hard Kaur was told to leave the stage because of the swear words she used and a few obscene gestures here and there – but nobody raised any objection to how she made it a point to objectify the male performers on stage by asking them to show their chiseled midriffs to the crowd; nobody said anything about her comment on women being ‘sexy’ and men being ‘dirty’; no newspaper reported it, no righteous person in the crowd spoke about it. It was almost as if nobody really minded it – like it’s okay to insult one gender to praise another, like we need to ‘get back’ at people of one gender and blame them for all our problems – as if they are not affected by patriarchy at all. It seemed like men being ‘dirty’ was the only way women could be ‘sexy’; much like how women being timid and weak is the only way men can be assertive and powerful.

The categories of masculine and feminine and the social connotations attached with them are becoming more complex by the day. We live in a world where a woman who knows her mind is ‘loose’, a man who likes clothes, make up and kids is a ‘sissy’, anyone not associating with the gender binary is nonexistent and the sexes are always at war.

What was in fact, so offensive about Kaur’s language? How was it so offensive that it engrossed us enough to overlook the obvious sexism her statements reflected? What should really be angering us? Taking pride in being one of the best universities in the country, and even the world, how did we let this go unnoticed?

We’ve got to change this. We’ve got to get offended at sexism – every form it takes has to anger us, regardless of the gender identity it is targeting. Only then can we conceptualize the equality we have all set out to achieve – an equality that first requires us to notice its absence.

Image credit: Abhinav Arora for DU Beat

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Kamala Nehru College

JMC digs gold at second day of Ullas

By Niharika Singh February 21, 2014

The second day of Ullas 2014 commenced with Ol’ that Jazz- Western dance competition organized by the western dance society, Enigma.The event saw participation of more than ten colleges. The teams used innovative techniques and diverse combination of music to stylize their performances. IIT Delhi was judged the best performance while Jesus and Mary College ranked second. Miranda College received a special mention for their costumes. On the level of competition they faced says Aakash Singhal, President of the IIT Delhi Dance Society, “The competition was really stiff this year. We thought Maitreyi College was really good and if KNC’s performance would have been competitive, our chances of winning would have been less.

The event was judged by Mr. Adi Kumar of Just Dance and India’s Got Talent fame and Ms. Bhavani Mishra who runs the Urshilla Dance Company and has choreographed a lot many dances sequences. Passion, Ms. Mishra agreed is what makes a dance performance intriguing. She says,” Passion is very strong. It covers a huge Diaspora of emotions and techniques. Passion is all about madness and that is what I was looking for.” Both the judges agreed that the quality of dance in the University circuit has increased immensely in the past few years. Mr. Kumar attributed this to the increasing number of dance reality shows on television. Talking about the huge influence and usage of Bollywood music and style of dancing in a western dance performance says Ms. Bhavani,” This is India. If you don’t use Bollywood in your performance, I’ll get bored and stop watching it.”

IIT Delhi receive their award for the Best performance.

The Quiz Society of the College, Kaleidoscope organized their annual Inter College Quiz competition Inquisitive simultaneously. The event saw participation of 11 teams in the preliminary round in which the teams had to answer 20 questions, of which six were selected for further rounds. The Quiz was based on a General theme. The prelims were followed by an Infinite Bounds round, Who’s who, Mega Connect and Rapid fire, in which the participants had to answer six questions in 45 seconds.

20140220_123342 — Winners of Inquisitive. (From L to R) team from AIIMS, St. Stephens and Hansraj EXIMS cross.

The winners of this event were Mukund and Fardeen from St. Stephen’s College, followed by a cross team of Abhishek Mishra and Anindita Roy from Hansraj and Exims in the second place and Soumya and Altaf from AIIMS at third. There was a tie between NSIT, Gargi and AIIMS for the third position with AIIMS emerging victorious in the second try. The participants especially enjoyed the mega connect whose usage of names like Pink Floyd, Pablo Picasso, Dennis the Menace and Agatha Christie made it difficult for the teams to recognize that the common link between the pictures was that of all of them being names of Hurricanes. It was only after the slide of Katrina, did the team of St. Stephens made the correct link.

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Featured image: Enigma, western dance society of KNC

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Campus Central

KNC's western music competition sees Hansraj, LSR and JMC on top

By Priyanka Banerjee February 21, 2014

th of February in the college’s auditorium, starting from early afternoon and ending around 6 pm. The competition was divided into three categories, namely the solo, duet and group singing competitions. The judges for the event were Peggy Mohan, who teaches western music at Vasant Valley school and Bada Kinty, an alumnus from the college. The competition kicked off with the Solo category, with Kanika Malhotra from Shri Ram College of Commerce taking the stage. In all, there were 15 participants from colleges across Delhi University and a few from other universities too. Arushi Gupta from Gargi College sang ‘Feeling good’ while Jilian from Jesus and Mary College had the audience swinging to ‘Love on top’ by Beyonce. The Duet category had 8 participants with students representing the western music societies of their respective colleges. This category saw some truly beautiful renditions of classic songs like ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’, which was sung by two students from Lady Shri Ram College. Finally, the Group singing category kicked off with SRCC’s western music society, Catharsis taking the stage. They started off by singing the ‘Banana song’ from Despicable Me 2, which was well received by the audience. Their medley too, was energetic with recent hits like Royals by Lorde. Next up were Gargi College and Miranda House with medleys of songs like ‘Bridge over troubled waters’ and ‘Voulez-vous’. CBS’s team, Dhwani had the crowd hooting with a medley of Micheal Jackson hits like ‘Thriller’ and ‘They don’t really care about us’. The audience’s favourite seemed to be team Echo from JMC, for their performance was extremely enthusiastic, with a blend of numerous songs ranging from ‘Footloose’ and ‘Somebody to love’ by Queen to ‘Wings’ by Little Mix. The event came to an end with the judges talking about the various criteria used for evaluation. ‘Anything that wakes the judges up is way ahead of the pack already!’ said Peggy Mohan. After that, the results were finally declared. Nirupan Sinha from Hansraj College came first in the Solo category, followed by Sri Aurobindo College and Hanita Bhambri from CBS. The Duet competition saw LSR bag the first prize while Sri Aurobindo College and Kamala Nehru College came second and third respectively. The Group category was won by Echo from JMC, followed by Dhwani from CBS and Crescendo from Sri Venkateswara College. SRCC’s group performance also received a Special Mention by the judges. We leave you with a clip from Nirupan’s performance! Image credits: Mugdha Dúinn Full coverage of Ullas 2014 | See pictures of Ullas 2014 on our Facebook album]]>

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Kamala Nehru College

Lady Irwin wins first prize, Maitreyi bags best wardrobe at KNC’s Fashion Show competition

By Shaily Sharma February 20, 2014

Glitz, the Fashion Society of Kamala Nehru College organised its Fashion Show Competition on 19th February – the first day of Ullas 2014.

A total of eight teams (seven competitive and one non-competitive team) took part in the competition. The judges for the event were; Ritu Singh, an eminent personality in fashion world, Suhail Kohli, who has worked with Swapnil Shinde and Kakoli C. Mehra, who started as a Custom Designer for Mr. Steven Segal, crowned as Miss Kanchenjunga i.e. Miss North Bengal in 1993.

The event commenced with the performance of Style Brokers, the Fashion Society of Deshbandhu College, followed by the performance of iVogue- the Fashion Society of Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce. Each college was given a time limit of 10-12 minutes. Members from the organizing society say “Fashion is not something that exists in the dresses. It is in the sky. Fashion never dies.”

The award for the Best Wardrobe was given to Maitreyi College. The best model in the female and male category, were Shivani and Mayank from CVS respectively. The first prize was bagged by Prophecy- Fashion Society of Lady Irwin College and the second prize went to Maitreyi College.

Image Credit: Abhinav Arora for DU Beat

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