Citygritty — Pune

Brain fever
“What is common between Hitler, Tolstoy and Churchill?” Any guesses? They are actually names of people who contested the recent Lok Sabha elections in Meghalaya. This and other such questions at the finals of the Pepsi-Verve ’99 quiz, Ken U?, kept not only the audience but also the participants guessing.

The questions were tough and so was the competition. One of the questions in the audio-visual round went like this – which character did Eddie Murphy play in the Michael Jackson’s video Remember the time. As for the answer, keep guessing (clue: A Pharaoh whose name begins with R!). And did you know that `Lux’ is a unit of light besides being the name of a soap. Some tough job for the grey cells, that!

Daler drops in?
Did Daler Mehndi decide to stay back after his earth-shaking performance on Sunday? Or was it his long-lost twin doing the rounds of MIT on the final day of Pepsi-Verve ’99? Well, neither. In fact, it was Pritpal Sandhu, a Daler Mehndi lookalike from the Symbiosis Arts and Commerce College. Jazzily-dressed in blue denim and a silver-lined black pagdi, he was invited by the Informals organisers to do a Balle Balle on stage. And what’s more, he even qualified for the finals of the Pepsi-Verve King ’99!

When asked if people confuse him for the bhangra badshah, Pritpal joked, “You can call me the local Daler Mehndi, and maybe I am related to him.” Whether related or not, but he sure did manage to perplex the crowd!

Some fun in the sun
The third and last day of Pepsi-Verve ’99 saw the Informals stage drawing in hordes (coupled with heat and dust). They started with `Mock Rock,’ wherein teams of four students each were asked to dance, impromptu, of course, to the songs selected by the audience. This really got the crowd groovin’ as the songs ranged from Summer of ’69 to Chhaiya Chhaiya to Kallu Mama.

“Let’s see who can beat me at bhangra,” called out Jasvinder Singh of the EYF. He held a bhangra competition with Daler Mehndi’s numbers playing in the background. The crowd cheered the girls on stage, who had a tug of war for a Pepsi bottle. So much for women power!

The `hot’ round was repeated on popular demand with one student eating 31 chillies at one go. Great spirit, huh! Three couples were also asked to paint each other’s faces with ink and toothpaste – this had the crowd asking for more.

Kamaljeet Kaur Gulati from the D.Y. Patil College of Hotel Management and Kiran Nankani from MVCC, Pimpri, were chosen the `Pepsi-Verve Queen ’99’ and `Pepsi-Verve King ’99’ respectively. They were chosen on the basis of their witty answers, narcissistic genius, dancing talent and, of course, popular vote. They took home gifts sponsored by Pepsi.

The road show
Students were apparently not the only ones who benefitted from Pepsi-Verve ’99. Inadvertently, the festival also helped make the task of a product company much easier. Moving around town in a colourful van for the promotion launch of a new drink, Yo Appy, the van drove right up to the gates of MIT and proceeded to hold court there.

The modus operandi was to nab students and get them to say a few words, or better still, do a little jig and thus attract attention to their product campaign. Amongst the hosts was television actor Akshay (Bobby of Hasretein) busy cajoling the crowds to enter the impromptu contests. “We decided that the place to find young crowd today would be the Verve venue,” revealed one of the organisers, explaining their presence. YO!

Word Power
The grand finale of Word Quest took off with the five finalists all ready to battle it out with words. In addition to the synonym round, there were four other rounds introduced – action, personality, pictionary and rapid-fire.

The finalists – NICMAR, AIT, BVP Engineering, BNCA and the Cummins’ College of Engineering – found the first round a hard nut to crack as they were left fumbling to find synonyms. The next round – the action round – was even more challenging, with the participants having to enact the words such as `divorce’, `competition’ that also tested their acting skills. The personality round provided the soothing touch as it had the teams scoring the maximum number of points. The personalities included Leander Paes, for whom the clues were `Indian’ and `Tennis.’ Amartya Sen was guessed with the mere mention of `Nobel.’ The others included Kiran Bedi, Janet Jackson, Marco Polo and Galileo, which were answered in a jiffy.

The pictionary round had the contestants testing their artistic skills. The rapid-fire round had the participants in a fix as five scrambled words were given to be unscrambled within 30 seconds. The event manager gave clues for each word. “Zor ka jhatka dheere se lage,” for the word `euphemism’, “When I’m dead, don’t bury me at all, just pickle my bones in alcohol,” for `bibulous’ and “My vocab’s gone for a toss, thanks to my boss, whose English lacks all gloss,” to which the word was `pidgin.’ The rounds over, the war of words came to an end.

Recycling zindabad!
Creating the best out of waste in two hours flat was what Metamorphosis was all about. Students indeed metamorphosed items that would have been thrown off without a thought into beautiful and practical pieces. The students of AIT created a small temple, replete with the idol, bells, incense stick-holder, using an empty aluminium tin, Pepsi cans and glasses, empty pen refills and bottle caps.

BMCC created an exotic table lamp shade out of absolute waste – a coconut shell and coconut fibres. Using wire and a bulb, they gave their piece a fantastic utility value.

Other items made were pen-stands, reading-lamps using Pepsi cans, dustbins using paint boxes, old shoes converted into flower stands, wall hangings made of waste cloth and bangles. Supporters of recycled material could take a cue or two from here!

Men at work
Parallel to the various contests and competitions at Pepsi-Verve ’99 were a series of workshops conducted by well-known professionals. A fashion photography workshop was held on January 25 by the celebrated Prashant and Bunty. The duo elaborated on the necessity of good communication skills for the photographer to establish a rapport with the model as also aspects like expressions and body language.

Earlier, a workshop on personality development was also held by Sanjeev Kumar on January 24. He is the founder director of Varsha Human Resources Development and Management Training Centre, Pune. Based on the belief that `you can do it if you believe you can,’ Kumar’s talk emphasised that personality is a dynamic entity and is the sum total of our past experiences. The workshops sure lent the students important tips for their future.