Bye, Bye baby..bye bye

Don’t be surprised by the obnoxious title. The only one, who had found it catchy, was one of the organizers of the departmental farewell function, the dept General Secretary. A mail from him said that valfe was fixed on 9th April and the contribution per head was Rs 200/-. So I decided my way of innocuous protest by not paying the money. But Ranjeet made disagreement public for both sifting the date to 9th and for Rs 200/- both. His main contention was how a few people could change a decision when something else was decided in the GBM and that too without giving importance to three of the passing out junta whose hostel valfe happened to be on the same day.

Ronak surfaces a volcano of enthusiasm, suddenly calling out for me outside of my room with Vamsee. He vows he won’t go alone; a bundle of laughter must go along. A skit has to be written, rehearsed and performed in less than 48 hours. Ideas invited, mine were skit on biological blah blah….my boring and intensive short stories….ronak’s two beggars in Biotech….Vamsee’s four years in biotech and….. we stuck to one. Show various stages of humor in ph.d life. Tediously we work and sleep on it and skit is just prepared five hours before the valfe, actors and actress are adjusted and rehearsal is made a one-time-affair. We (Ranjeet and me) are roped in this way naturally; I have a different reason too.

The hard works on the way to the skit was funny and worth a special mention, so let’s keep it aside for now.

While I reached the place, the stage was all set. KK Rao is speaking through the microphone. Making small announcement of having 50,000 square foot of carpet space in the new building in addition to the present 10,000 sf, putting up a student notice board and finally wishing the outgoing students the very best. The mike goes to the pretty anchor of the evening and she “calls upon” Prof NS Punekar to do the same again. He keeps it succinct, letting the event unfold completely. Biotech people do have aesthetics, may be because of adequate feminine company. The stage was close to the gallery, just in front of the angle where both sides of the gallery closed in. Between the two heavy lampposts squarely spread were colorful petals of marigold. A screen for LCD display, a drum and a tabla marked the frontiers of the stage. Somewhere far few halogen bulbs were just enough lighting the occasion, the evening was anyway jubilant with so many girls of biotech.

Balu’s song on Roja preceded everything. It was a karaoke. Followed by Arpan’s song “tanha dil”. We were told we are next. Till then, our contingent was evenly spread, they started cozying in together. But surprisingly, the event that took our place was breathtaking and sensual. It was a dance item, prepared by two items girls of M.tech 1st year and an MSc 1st year boy. The swift movement and flexibility of the lead girl was simply astounding. Her beats, rhythm………

Then we came, without much air and introduction. Thundered Ronak on mike, “Bhaion aur SAC ki bahar walon ki bheheno” and the crowd broke into a belly full of laughter. With every other exchange of dialogue, a tide of cheers came along. Ronak was true; a perfect hilarious seven minutes package was creatively carved out and presented to the small group of broadminded audience which were wrapped up in it. Notwithstanding several glitches, it was a mega comedy. Could you guess Ranjeet’s role? What else, he was playing a lover boy of the department, about to be tricked by his crush. Besides that what would have won hearts, were the imitations of the professors by Tanveer playing a prof, Mr. Mugambo in an informal discussion with Mr Bakre, his student. There were more to it, I simply cannt put all.

As Ranjeet and me were about to move out, the first years opened up their box of entertainment. A musical, filmy event marking the millstones of their two years stay in IIT. It was very well prepared; especially the songs were very well chosen and performed flawlessly. It too was a short one.

When we again got back to the SAC, the mike was live again. Vamsee was shouting Ady, ady it some perfect interval. No he was not crying out for him, it was the profile time. A concise account of your action throughout your stay in the eyes of your nearest people. For ady, it was his ideas out of loo, maal biwi, for Tushar his logic, his palm tree climb down, for Manas it was his not-so-successful attempt to hide his marriage, for Ranjit-experience at OAT all these were bone-tickling. Alternating with the Ph.d were the profiles of the M.Sc students. The M.techs who were earlier separate groups Biomedical engineering, who still have labs in other buildings, were having their profile reading in a separate place. So it were all the people we knew. Anuj was the first in them. They brought out his transition from a Papa’s boy to bikini-chaser (forgive me for the only exaggeration or you may say shrinking up, it was not bikini rather half-pant), his innovative way of getting rid of hiccups. There it came out, Hari was watching some objectionable material in computer lab and Ronak & Sujata came in to view some pics there. Hari alt-tabbed quickly to bring up a power point presentation and virtually locked horn with them to retain the PC. The then shocked both of them bust into a hearty laughter hearing this. Kedar’s punch line then open to the world was “do you want to chat with a cool iitian”. Tariq and Pavnish, both of them had enough of record to go into their profile. I am getting impatient now but definitely put them up sometime, I cannot forget these stories.