The making of CieSta ‘09.

This post of mine is coming after a long gap, although I don’t think many people are very anxious and curious about what I write. In the past few days there are so many incidents which I badly want to be documented and to be known to everyone.

I don’t remember the date. I was sitting on the steps of yampa( its our college juice parlor, now don’t ask me which is my college). My friend Sindhu comes and says,” hey, Satish( the CR of 8th sem B) is trying to organize CS fest”. The reaction on my face was indifference. I knew about Satish. He would have so many plans but still would end up with no one supporting him except one or two. I thought this plan of CS fest is also going into drains as did the plans of giving a freshers party to our juniors (Yes, my dear juniors. There was a plan to give you guys a Freshers party, I guess you weren’t lucky enough)

I told sindhu,” wow, nice initiative. Madi madi( translating into English: go ahead and do it)”. She was like,”yeno madi madi anthiya, madthiVi annu ( don’t tell us to do it, instead say that we shall do it)”. I was literally flabbergasted by her common sense. Just an addition of one syllable changed the entire meaning of the sentence. Then I said something to cover my indifference for the topic which she was forcing into our conversation. I asked her the dates, she says that its on 28th and 29th of March. Then I asked her were they not the days immediately following Ugadi and she said yes. After this reply of hers I was damn sure that the feast is going to be a glib and moreover I had promised my parents that I will be coming home for Ugadi as I had not gone for Shivarathri. My immediate question was that why cant Satish get better dates somewhere in the next month. Answer was that there were no other dates available. If it had to be done then it had to be done only on those dates and no other go. Then she told all sorts of ideas: going home and coming back on the morning of the fest and blah, blah. I made my face as though I bought the idea of CS fest. Then I went away telling her that I have a lab and will surely think about what she said.

The matter of CS fest was out of mind in no time. But I did hear people talking about the fest once in while, but their talk seemed to be more skeptical than enthusiastic. Then one day somehow I got to know that there is going to be a volunteer meet for organizing the fest. And it came unto me to do the announcements in my class. I did the announcements; in fact those were the highest number of sentences I had spoken in my new class since 5th semester with some exceptions. There were few raised eyebrows, indifferent atmosphere and not much of enthusiasm which I could see. I did away with it somehow.

I enter the classroom where the volunteer meet was happening. I hear satish saying that this fest is going to be a low budget as there were strict NOs on getting any sponsorship, on collecting funds from juniors (the administration thought it might turn out to be some extortion scheme I guess). I was dumbstruck. How in the heavens were we to organize a show without no one financing it?

Our cs junta kept coming in and going out. Few were from first years. Even less were from second year, some third year and most of them finals year junta. On a book we started jotting down all the events we are going to conduct. Committees were made, volunteers assigned.

The next day comes the bomber. Our first internals are scheduled at the beginning of the week in which the CS fest was to take place. The internals was followed by Ugadi on Friday which made it a long weekend, giving people all the more reason to go home for the festival after internals. Mind you, the volunteer meet was held when there were less than twelve days left for the fest.

Our biggest hurdle was to make the students of CS branch to stay back for the fest, at the least. We had posters to be printed, classes to be notified, there was this internals coming up, people bunking every now and then. We were finding it difficult to sell the idea of people staying back for the fest or coming back early for it form their native. All of a sudden I get a sms in my phone and …….

To be continued.