Manfest 2008

Ah......Manfest 08 if finally over. Three days of great fun, hangovers, and of course no sleep and time to eat.

I somehow was given the task of handling all the informal events. Now, I’m not kidding when I say this, I told everyone I met that I was an honorary member of the Manfest committee. (Seriously, the Manfest guys are going to kill me if they find out). Friday was a working day for us here so the informalz started only in the evening. The first event was Capitalist. It was a complex game where guys got a chance to act like someone pushing their venture idea and trying to raise funding...after a lot of jostling, shouting, name calling and frenzy, the first round was over. The fall out of the mega interest in this event? No. no one came to congratulate me. They were worried about attendance in their events. Now come on…who will attend a talk on some globish subject when they could be taking part in an exciting event? They had a point. But why were they having the talks in the first place? Let they guys have some fun…

Night time, there was a rock competition. Illuminati from Bangalore won the event. And it was not a difficult decision for the judges I’m sure. Try looking for their videos on youtube. They had self composition that goes something like this “Use, use, use………use protection” hehe. The guy said it was based on his life. His GF stopped him mid way and insisted on protection. Will try and embed a video later.

Next morning was pretty interesting, as well as jam packed with events. Including many events under Informalz. We started out with kite flying. Yes kite flying. And in case u are wondering who would participate in that in a management fest, well ppl, it was the most successful event on campus. We finished off all the kites (more than a 100) in a less than two hours. Then the participants started making their own kites! And they flew! Hehe. But the support guys on campus hate me for that. All the grounds were littered with kite “debris” and kites hanging on trees all over the campus.

Rishi was here too on that day. And like a good studious boy, he stayed away from the infomalz desk most of the time.

That night, there was a dual performance in pro-nights. First, Mohit Chauhan of Silk Route and then the rock band Parikrama. I was with parikarama at their hotel. They guys were resting and I had to spend close to 3 hours. Alone. Hungry. Bored. And I could not even leave! Not even for a snack. What if the band wanted something? what if they called for me? And because of this, I missed out on

1. Performance by 3.4, the IIML band
2. Dance performance by college choreo club
3. Play by students and professionals
4. Silk Route performance. Well atleast half of it.

But the Parikrama performance made up for it. More than made up for it. And it was also the first time I was back stage for a concert J

Last day was not so eventful, but we had a lot of fun at the informalz desk. Getting ppl to play arbit games, handling out snikers for no particular reason, watching Sourish Basu perform on Bipasha Basu numbers (and it was covered by Channel V). It was simply a great time. I also won a T-shirt from Channel V.

Pro-night for the last day was by Euphoria. they kept the crowd on its feet all through the 4 hr show. And Palash Sen sang songs from everywhere. English (Old McDonald, We will rock you, summer of 69…), Hindi film music (Kajrare (!), some more numbers), Junoon, Jal, and whatever came to his mind I think. He even sang Punjabi folk!

Then at about 12, the Manfest party started. And that was the best party on campus ever. Free flowing booz, DJ specially flown in from Delhi with all his music systems and crew, and around 600 IIML guys (with classes at 8:30 in the morning). Dancing, drunken dancing, doped dancing. Till 5:30 am. Then the DJ had to go. He had a train at 6am. He somehow managed to stop the music and the party. Me? I was behind the bar, with some Manfest guys. Pouring out drinks for all the others at the party. Maybe, staying sober was not a good idea. But bar tendering was more fun than I thought.

So that was Manfest for me. Rishi, why don’t u add something on this? BTW, Rishi came 2^nd in the competition and netted a cool 10K prize money. Where should he take us for the treat?

Cheers!

Puneet