Saturday, November 07, 2009

Anchor

Yesterday I shared the anchoring of the Freshers Formal Show with my batchmate Anmoldeep Randhawa. It was the first time I was hosting a show of any kind. Here's the sequence of events in a nutshell:

(2 days to freshers) At 12 noon I called up Anmol. She did not answer. I kept calling her till 6p.m. in vain. Then I lost my patience and fired at the other organizers (apparently she's their friend). She finally responded at 7p.m. and told me that she'd fallen sick. The med had made her drowsy and she'd slept off. We sat down till 10:00pm outlining the script.

(1 day to freshers) We sat for sometime and made some changes. Anmol's very creative and intelligent but unfortunately doesn't give a shit about other people's time (she's anything but punctual). She asked me to meet her at 6:30p.m. and disappered till 8:00p.m. She also took the script with her. My fuse blew out for the second time. Again I went to her friends and gave them a piece of my mind. They frantically searched for her and brought her back. I reckoned it would be no use getting angry at her for she'd probably make me suffer more later. We sat down and edited the script till 10:00p.m.

(D-day, freshers at 5:30p.m.) We hadn't finished editing or even completing the final part of the script. Anmol for busy with the presentation that was supposed to be played in the background. I gave her my deadline of 2:00p.m. She couldn't get back to the script till 4:00p.m. We worked on it till 4:30p.m. and by that time she was in tears, cursing me that I was taking her precious dressing-up time! We both rushed to the hostel to get ready.

According to me I took ages to get ready but it was a microsecond compared to what Anmol took. By 5:15pm I started to get calls saying that people had started gathering in the auditorium and that Anmol and I should rush ASAP. I reached the audi only to find Anmol missing. She didn't take my call again. When she finally did, she asked me come and pick her up on my bike. By now I was ready to kill. I rushed to the girl's hostel and called up her roomie. Anmol was getting ready.

Then I called out as loudly as I could "Anmol if the Director reaches there before us, we'll be history!"

She shouted back "It's all your fault. You didn't let me get ready on time"

I replied astonished "Are you bloody crazy. What would you do looking pretty on stage when you woudn't have anything to say out there?"

She shouted, "Shut up Jesse"

By now it was 5:40p.m. and I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. She finally came out and we rushed to the audi.

She said she needed more time as her saree wasn't tied properly!

The audi was full with our hyper-critical audience ready to hoot at the first chance. We pulled off the begining pretty ok. The director gave a rather candid speech about life of PhD student. Addressing the juniors he said that that they won't face ragging at the institute but the five or six or even seven years that they are in the institute will more than cover up for its absence. I am no stranger to that bitter reality as I've seen many students lingering on for more than five years to complete their PhDs here.

Anyway, after that started a series of non-cordinated moves with us announcing an item and the performers shouting from the backstage "We're not ready yet!!" and the crowd booing and hooting at us. I managed to paste a smile on my face and laughed it off but Anmol got really emabarrassed. She started cursing the other committe that were supposed to coordinate with us, not realizing the mic was right in front of her face, raising the hooting even more. I tried to pacify her but kept my distance from the mic. I wasn't so fazed and was surprised at that, for it was me (not Anmol) who'd been losing sleep over this debacle. Not that it was happening, I was standing there, totally calm. Then came another performance by the juniors that can be described in one word as "catastrophe". A group of 10 students standing on the stage holding candles (nearly setting each other's hair on fire) and only one of them singing "Heal the world". An inappropriate song for the ocassion. The crowd went wild with laughter and shouted funny comments. I was finding it exceedingly hard to control my laughter, and Anmol, her temper. Poor people, they walked off the stage holding their heads down in shame. The lead singer felt so humiliated that she didn't come up on stage to introduce herself later.

Then there was a solo song which too was booed off the stage. The two dances that followed settled the audience down a little.

Then two skits saved the day. They were hilarious and crazy and one of them can be aptly described as one of the best choreographed skits ever at IMTECH. This one had a guy playing an affable overconfident dwarf. The same guy also went on to win the Mr. Freshers title. He had his fair share of booing too when he introduced himself in his south-indian accent (he's from Andhra). Fortunately he didn't let all the stingy remarks get the better of him.

By the end of the ordeal of the show, I was pretty relaxed; thankful that we managed to pull it off without any untoward incident. Later I felt that Anmol wasn't so bad afterall (apart from the disappearing act that she's adept at). She had single handedly made the whole presentation that was played through the show. She had been running around to get her dress made on time and had a lot of trouble dealing with the tailor at the eleventh hour. She was unwell throughout the three days that we'd been preparing and executing the whole thing. Considering that we both are short tempered and we actually managed to finish the job without killing each other or even having a bad feeling it was a big success. Surely this event taught me a thing or two about working as a team.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh lovely jess!!!!.....i missed the freshers this time......buh got an overall glimpse of it throu ur blog....mus say that the part i missed were the two skits.....:( ....rest all has to be the same.....same shameful remarks frm the seniors of imtech making the first years drench in their own sweat.....and the way they carry down themselves seems like they are the most heaviest tots with their heads almost touching the grounds....he he.....
nd yes if anmol(ur disappearing kudi!!) wud read this.... thn it wud b too late for u to realize frm where she appeared nd thn the rest wud be history man!!!!! he he...nywayz seems u had a grt party...
cherio... kanika

Anonymous said...

Hi ! all the time that we were in school,the last thing I could have guessed about you was that - there is a writer in there somewhere. U are doing a great job with ur blog, really enjoyed most of ur stuff. Great going !!!!!!!!!!!

Raj said...

Nice post man!!!
Looks like u had a hell of a day!!!
Keep writing!

Niha Redhu said...

hahahahahaha...**bangs her head on the keyboard in a fit of laughter**!!

Mallika said...

heya dude ..
nice stuff ..
i really like de way u hve naratted de entire scene ..
gud work
keep goin !!

Anonymous said...

what actually did you learn from this experience?
i wonder if i know this anmoldeep
did she study M.Sc in Amritsar