Citygritty — Pune

Bands on the run
Fun, frolic and yes, even lots of friends… that’s what the second day had in store. Especially with a different sort of friendship band doing the rounds. Made of card paper, this long strip had, “I made a friend at Pepsi-Verve ’99” inscribed on it. One had to sign one’s name on the back and tie it onto the wrist of those they wanted to be friends with. A good way to break the ice, and of course, the more the names, the more the bands, the more the friends!

Two’s company
They’ve come from out of town – the first such team for the four-year-old Verve. Arti Agarwal and Kalyani Bhat came with the banner of Sophia Polytechnic from Mumbai. Between the two of them, the commercial art students enrolled in various events like Different Strokes, Icons, Pyroglaze, Stick ‘Em Up. “We landed from Mumbai at the last minute, and luckily, the first counter we found ourselves at was for the poster-making contest – the first event of the day. From there, it’s been to Icons. We have not even checked out the look of the festival or what’s happening where. Now we shall,” smiles Arti. “More of our college mates were eager to come, but this is a hectic time at Sophia’s. Luckily, we had finished our assignments, and we could get away,” adds her friend Kalyani. “But next year, there’ll be more…” they promise. We’ll look forward to that.

Got a match?
The mascot made his appearance – in a different way, as part of the Gabbar contest. A jigsaw puzzle-cum-treasure hunt, bits of the friendly lion had been distributed all around the venue. These had to be located from different corners of the campus and then pieced together to form the whole Gabbar. The ones to walk in with the entire mascot and walk away with the prize were Milind Pawar, Gaurav Bhala, Rahul Chachre and Rahul Agarwal. Struck gold, they did!

Tezz sezz
Even if you didn’t watch Channel [V], you’d recognise VJ Tezz – first by the way he dressed and then the way he spoke. His white shirt, black trousers (nothing wrong with that!) and a red contraption over the trousers was different, if nothing else. So how does Tezz choose his clothes? “Simple. I close my eyes, open the cupboard and wear whatever I pull out.” Aha, that explains the red contraption!

Tezz was at the fest to have a look and was impressed by – you’ll never guess what! “Hey, this is a nice place, you know,” he said, his hands going in every possible direction. “Imagine, this college is situated in a valley!” Tezz was referring to the hills surrounding the MIT campus. If this is a valley, ever wondered what Kashmir is, Tezz?

War of words
The second day of the Word Quest elimination rounds kicked off at 9.00 am., With the rules well-grilled-in by the event managers, the second batch of participants did seem confident as they calmly went through their rounds. The audience was, however, conspicuous by their absence and the few that came in with the participants walked out as soon as their college team finished.

The finalists were declared on the total obtained (calculated in seconds). “The words, we know, are tough but then we wanted to maintain the standard, as this is the first time such an event has been introduced in the Literatti section,” said the event manager. The finalists will fight it out with words at the grand finale tomorrow.

Hazaar fun
Informals – the stuff for the audience, of the audience, by the audience – seems to get funnier, wackier and more popular by the day as it attracted major crowds on the second day of Pepsi-Verve ’99. It started off with some people in the audience being asked to show off their histrionic ability – popular scenes from Sholay, Titanic and Bombay Boys were filched for the viewing pleasure of others. In another round, three girls were blind-folded, given socks, shirts and belts and asked to dress the guys. A real hot round was when a few students were asked to eat chillies. The winner was a girl who ate 29 chillies!

“Magic are your eyes,” “Grandma, your peahen has been stolen,” and “Let’s go to any disco,” were the English `versions’ of popular Hindi numbers in the translation round.

The tug-of-war round had girls proving their strength against each other. Pepsi watches, caps and T-shirts were given away as gifts to the performers. A paper fashion show had the participants using paper to design creative outfits and walk the `ramp’. The mock rock round entertained the audience, who did not miss having a live rock band playing.

Toothpaste-painting, Pepsi-drinking, catwalking, guys asking the girls’ fathers for their hands were the other interesting rounds. A special `pot-pourrie’ round, comprising a few games, was designed for the first 20 right entries to the Pleasure Hunt contest. Pleasure Hunt comprised clues about six spots on the MIT campus. `I am `T’ but I am empty’, `The word is mountain, change a letter and set me free’, `Leaning tower by the hour’… were some of these clues.

Notwithstanding the harsh rays of the Sun God, most students were standing for hours together, enjoying the wisecracks that often litter the air during the Informals. A day when you can laugh at others and get laughed at. Some fun that, huh!

Something for everyone
At Pepsi-Verve’ 99, there was something for everyone – even those who were not participating in any of the events. At Village Informals, the event for `non-participants’ held on the lawns of the Shri Sant Jnyaneshwar World Peace Library building, the accent was definitely on the wacky and the weird. A boys’ make-up session by girls, making clothes out of newspapers, girls feeding boys chocolates held in between their hands still wet with mehndi, were just some of the inventive games devised to keep the participants involved.

Not quite fusion!
That fusion is not a most popular or easy form of music was quite evident at Milaap, where colleges were called upon to combine Western and Indian music. Seven colleges performed at the Milaap fusion music competition held on August 24.

The first college, Army Institute of Technology, played the flute, drums and the guitar. The flute was the best of the lot but the Western and Indian music was not well-blended. After this, it was M.M. College of Architecture’s turn followed by IBMR, MIT, Garware College, D.Y. Patil College of Engineering. The last played what they called the last-minute blues, however, it lacked fusion as Western music seemed to dominate the other sounds.

The event concluded with Vidya Bhavan College of Commerce playing what they called nuclear fusion – the sounds of war, so to say. One was requested to imagine the anguish of a war while listening to their music.

Rajnikant Gham, Kaustubh Dhavale, Uday Deshpande, Sheetal Kulkarni and Bharat Jangam, all talented musicians, were invited to judge this show, that could not quite live up to the crowds’ expectations.