Mood Indigo '06

I decided to take a break form project work and go to Mood Indigo. I heard the fest wasn't that great, though the chicks were aplenty. In any case I was in my final year and since the best way to learn is to do it oneself, I found myself in IIT Bombay on Christmas Day.

The train ride till Mumbai was fun. The third years were in bogey 10, I was in S3, and the remanining final years in S11 with kaiya, a second year. I kept moving up and down the train through the pantry on the first day, but stayed there completely on the second day. It was good fun, we played cards, cracked jokes and had a great time. I learnt how to play Literature. It's a memory based game where you try and secure sets, a set being cards 3-8 or 9- Ace of a single suit. So there are eight sets in all. You use the fact that a person can ask the opposite team for a card only if he has one from the same set himself. So you have to remember who asked what and figure out where all the cards are. If someone askes you for a card then you must give it to them if you have it. One problem was that everyone wasn't seated in two continuous compartments, so there were in effect two groups. Not a big deal but not ideal either.


Day 0:
Once we reached Mumbai we took an auto to IIT. It was a bit of a waste because the dance troupe form our college managed to go from Kurla to IIT by local train, turning out a lot cheaper. Anyway we registered as a contingent of 25+, went to our rooms and laid the mattresses and we were set. The first thing S did was get ready to smoke up. I didn't hang around for long, and headed for my Kaka's place in Mazgaon, near the docks. It took me quite some time and there were a lot of commuters on the train.

Kaka was eating sugarcane so I joined him. Soon after I took a bath and washed away the dirt from the train. By the time I got out Kaki had gotten dinner ready. After dinner I just chatted a while and then went to sleep.


Day 1:
I left Kaka's place by around 8:15 in the morning. The train ride was peaceful however the bus was packed and sweaty. I reached IIT by around 9:20 and rushed to G1&2, for the wordgames. I asked a girl for directions, Maitri her name was. It turned out she was headed there too, only GenQuiz was supposed to happen. She was right, and so I teamed up with Arun Sagar, a.k.a. Asso. We did ok, but not good enough to qualify.

After that I headed out to watch a Brazilian Martial Art / Dance called Capoeira. It was developed by the slaves as a kind of expression of their anger and hope against their masters. We thought we'd get to see lissome Brazilian women in bikinis shaking it like there was no tomorrow. Instead we got fully clad people of all shapes and sizes, and all of them dancing like there had been no yesterday. The only good dancer was the instructor, who wowed us with some neat gymnastics, but since you need two people in capoeira, he couldn't really show us the dance. All in all I got to learn a small bit more about the world.

Next up was the panel discussion. Prado, Vij, Bhogle and I went there, and met some other people from college too. The panel featured Kiron Kher, Cyrus, Shubhash Ghai and others. They were talking about where Mumbai was headed. Typically it was about Mumbai growing beyond its seams, and about the need to keep people out and other stuff that got boring and cliched very fast and so we left.

We had lunch, where the only thing reasonably priced was a tasteless chicken roll. Nevertheless it managed to keep the hunger pangs at bay. Vij and I also managed to find a partner for wordgames, Rahul Lalmalani from Duke Uni. He was Vij's friend, and also the BQC champion of champions. We reached the wordgames and did O.K. There were anagrams, codes, rebuses, scrabble and some other new stuff that was fun. We managed to get 428 on 500, which put us in sixth place for the elims.

After the elims we went and saw the Rangoli and Bonsai Exhibitions. The Rangoli was awesome, with this neat one of the Big B, which got the lighting from his shirt with an almost photo-like accuracy.

Finally I went to watch the JAM Elims, which was ok, not too good. As usual people are splitting hairs and only once in a while saying anything interesting. There we met Praneeta, a girl from Symbiosis, Pune. Since there wasn't place and people left in the middle for the proshow, Pranay and I ended up on either side of her and we struck up a conversation. The JAM elims went on till around 8, and we missed the start of the proshow. Anyway I went inside, and met our college band. We sat outside, ogled a bit and then I left to go to my mom's mama's place. There I had dinner and then my cousins took me for a ride about town at 11. We went to Marine Drive, Worli Sea Face and finally to this famous juice centre, Haji Ali's I think. It was great fun, especially since it was so late at night and stuff was still open, and people loitering about.


Day 2:
I reached IIT by almost ten. Watched livewire till around 12. There were some forgettable heavy metal bands, except Metal Messiah, which was very tight and the bassist had a 'Rastafarian' look that was pretty neat. After that we had lunch at the hostel canteen and then headed for the JAM finals at 1:30. We were a bit late and managed to get place on the floor in front.

The place got really jam packed and we were lucky we didn't have to stand. The JAM was pretty bad, very little creativity. I know it's hard to JAM, but since these were the semi-finalists after about 90+ contestants you'd expect them to be able to say something decent and not buzz for no reason. But as usual people split hairs. The JAM master was once a winner but currently acted like a jerk. As in the elims he was heavily influenced by oestrogen. In the elims he favoured a guy from Symbi Law cos this group of chicks was from Symbi Law. In the semi-finals he kept asking a girl Farah to start. Quite an arbit fellow so finally at 2:30 I decided I didn't want to watch another average JAM so I left and almost immediately found Brat who wanted to watch the Ballroom Dance.

And so we headed to the LT and found space on the floor in front of the stage again. The first couple was good, they were energetic and had some nice steps. The girl was really pretty. However they soon got tired and it showed, missing each other once in a while and fumbling a bit. Still it was really good and I was happy I took the trouble. The next couple was really good. The guy was a tall and graceful fellow, so he could lift the girl a lot more easily and they were much smoother. They didn't make a mistake until towards the end, but it was minor and on the whole it was very impressive. From then on it was downhill until I left at four for the wordgames finals. In between some chick who was a juggling bartender gave us a cameo and Pranay volunteered to try it, and he very nearly managed to throw the thing up and catch it with the other arm behind his back.

Instead of the WG finals the exhibiton round of the JAM was going on. It was a lot of fun and a lot more interesting, partly I guess cos nothing was at stake. It still was a long time before they finally started the worgames. There was another elim round which had a crossword in it. We managed to blitz through it in about eight minutes, which made me feel very good. We jumped to fifth place since the first team got only 25 points and we got 100.

The WG finals started after that. The first rounds were direct questions plus buzzers for the rest. The round was of the 'sum-of-two-synonyms-makes-another-synonym' type. They had ten questions of those. After that was the buzzer round which had rebuses and 365 D in a Y type questions. Finally there was snatch and then an individual round where you create words containing all the letters that pop up one after the other, the round ending when you can't find a word that contains the new letter too. I
n the end we came third place. The individual round didn't change the places, by a stroke of luck. We had A,J,A,I in order. Since J was 4 points we avoided a tie for third place. Phew!

I decided to skip the pro nite with KK. Instead P and I went to south Mumbai just for the heck of it. We returned and watched a performance of Kalaripayattu, a Kerala Martial Art form. Following that there was Poi, a fire show which wasn't all to different from a stunt the Malyali's did, so we left and went to watch the skateboarding performance. P said it was average, since she'd seen a lot tougher stunts. In any case they weren't getting it right all the time so it was kind of boring.

Finally she headed for her hostel and so did I. Opposite the hostel in the OAT parking lot there was a bonfire. I told Brat about it so we went and sat there for a while. They were singing some songs with a guitar. It was nice timepass. It was 2:30 in the morning. These guys were from SJIC or something. A couple of girls joined later. We soon left and went to sleep. It had been a long and nice day.


Day 3:
Pranay and I wake up at about 6:30 in the morning. We get ready and head out for breakfast and coffee. Breakfast is Methi Parantha with a bit of pickle. We then headed for the Pot Pourrie Elims. I teamed up arbitrarily with two juniors the day before. They had practised the pictography, so eventually got through. Apart from Picto there were rebuses, which were decent.

I rushed out after that and managed to be just in time to watch my coll's Semi-Pro Band performance as well as Street Dance performances. The band did ok, the vocalist Murali was having throat problems, so he couldn't sing with his usual energy. The lead guitar was inaudible at times. Mainly they lacked a stage presence. Somehow it didn't all gel that day. The street dance was nice, they were all dressed in bright blue sleeveless tops with straps on the arms, and black pants, a kind of Arabian looking thing. The theme was the suicide of farmers. It was nice, but didn't recieve as much crowd response as the jhataks and mataks by suggestively dressed girls from other colls. Oh well. Three cheers for our team though.

On the way out some TV reporter asked us our opinion on whether IITians are giving back to the community in a more direct way or not. Pranay, Tejas and I were made unwilling spokespersons at that point, and so we said some stuff. Apparently it was aired on CNN. My friends told me later. So that's my couple of minutes of fame.

We had lunch and then went to the SOM lecture hall to attend a talk by Gregory Roberts a.k.a. Shantaram. It was pretty good. Most of you would know his story, if not you can Google it. He spoke about his experiences and his book and future plans. However, his main point was that he regretted a lot about his life, and that he now feels being a Man means having the means to provide for your children when they need it. And also that we should start caring about our cities and country again. In between a guy got emotional and suggested he should run for President, which got a lot of laughs. Speaking of laughs Gregory Roberts knew how to tell a story, and sometimes I thought he was making a show out of it. Other times he seemed very sincere. All in all it was nice to see a person who had such a unique story.

I also watched the last round of the extempre, which was fun. Inthis round, one of the two team members interviews the other. The interviewee has to figure out what he's being interviewed for, cos the interviewer can't say that, nor use keywords as hints in his questioning. The events were like a man who had peed on the moon, a guy with the loudest fart, a guy with the longest nose hair. For the latter one he got the object whose length was in question quite wrong. Very wrong. :). Cute judge tho.

Next up we stood in line to watch the sitar funk show followed by Kailash Kher. Before that I watched the wall painting competition, some really nice stuff. The Sitar Funk was initially very promising. He heald it like a guitar, played it like a guitar. He was very first and that's fine for the first song. But in the end, that's all he did. Played speed licks, without thought to Melody at all. So I got bugged. The bassist with him was great though. Very talented.

I left after that... heard Kailash Kher from outside. Just sat and ogled, thenI went home, just went to sleep.

Day 4:
Reached IIT by around 9 a.m. I had planned to ditch the pot pourrie, and let them take a more experienced guy. Out of curiosity I walk in and find out it's not possible to change teams and so I had to be part of the team I qualified with.

So first round was a normal DC, with six types of things. A common hindi dialogue, a fictional villian, a movie, and other stuff I forgot. Next was a wordgames round, with one guy form each team solving wordgames and the other two playing WTGW proper. There was a funda that if you thought your teammate won't get the word, you pass it to another team. If they don't get it you get points. If they do you lose points. My team gave both words and neither teams got it. So we gained :).

The next round was a rapid fire round where we got 11 on 20. They were 10 movies and 10 personalities. The highest was 13, so we were pretty happy with ourselves. After that there was a picto-mime round involving a personality, and we got Phulan Devi in about 15 seconds. So now we were in second place!! Arbit team that too.

The last round was TDH, a modification of 20 Q. But it was a bidding round. Teams bid about howmuch time they think they can get the event in, and the lowest gets a chance to attempt the TDH. If they get it in the biggeg time, they get the difference between max time and bid time as points. If not, they have a penalty of half that differece. SO I didn't bid anything cos I had no experience with my teammates and was not in a position to judge. Eventually Tejas and co. overtook us and we came third. It was a 1-2-3 NITK finish.

After that I ran around to find the guy with teh college registration slip, and then stood in line and got passes TWICE. Once without and ocne with, later when I found the slip. It pissed me off a bit. Anyway so while standing in line, there was a cute chick, and we stole glances at each other, but once our eyes met and we both smiled, in knowing. Never saw her again. Oh well.

So finally we went to livewire (semi-pro finals and Pro show), but the line was insanely long. We decided to go round the back, and lidten from the parking lot. The others were wasting time and so I went off by myself. There I met Rahul, a college mate. He was about to get his girlfriend and friends into the OAT for the concert. So i got in too!! Of all the luck. I stayed and caught the end of some band that was supposed to be psychedelic, but that didn't seem so. Then there was a Hendrix- cover band, which was good. They also played a good OC, called 'Walk Away' or something.

The third band was too heavy, I head banged a bit and left. Didn't want to see Demonic Resurrection and Parikrama all over again. Instead we went to Leopold's, mainly cos G wanted to go there with all the talk about it in Shantaram.

So off we went. We caught the shuttle to the main gate, and from there we couldn't get an auto. We stopped a private bus and he took us at bus fare. What luck! it was a small and empty bus, all to ourselves. From Kanjur Marg, where we got off the bus, we took a train to Victoria Terminus, the last station on the central railway line in South Bombay. On the way I learnt the 'Is it you?' thing. When someone snaps his finger and asks you that, you have to say 'No, it's....' and it's got to be the most arbit thing around you. Nice timepass.

I reach leopold's and I realise I've been there before, my cousin Hutain had taken me there once. Lot's of pretty foreigners about. We wait about half an hour for a table. Then we order beer and food. It was nice fun. Debrati was half drunk. She almost used her plate as an ashtray on my suggestion, but then I stopped her in time. towards the end there was some cute girl who sat down at the next table. Wow!! We had a great time, and then we headed back. I stayed over at my aunt's place in Byculla again.

And that was the end of Mood Indigo '06.