It was always supposed to be an experience of a lifetime. I had always known it and dreamt about it ever since my first IV. But it would be such a memorable one was not expected. For more reasons than one.
It is one of the biggest events in terms of the calendar year. Pressure was immense. It has always been about managing more than 100 people. So much anticipation about something I really did not have any idea about it in terms of management and in terms of enjoying it,absolutely nil this year. Probably the horrible semester had a part to play in it. Even the thought of seeing new places right near my hometown didn't cheer me up. I sort of put this IV away as something nothing more than an event that I will put my heart and soul into making it one of the best IVs, probably the only thing that I thought. But then I would never have expected that the joy of knowing people would return back in this IV. Never thought I would be having this big smile on face even after a fortnight after I returned from it.
And I don't think a day to day narration would do justice to what I've experienced so here's to a hatke narration.
*edit* Its a pretty long post, so I hope you survive till the end of it if you haven't been for the IV. If you have, I hope you go back to those 9 days again after reading this. :D
Also, I usually don't mention names but I've differed this time as names are very important to this narration. *edit*
Bus Journeys- They have always been the same..People almost always sleep 10 minutes into the journey. And so would I. But this time, it became about what I was amazed about a year back. People, again! My class people were with me only during the first bus journey and then it was only me, my co-coordinators and the FEs. These bus journeys became what turned these guys into people who changed my perception about how this IV would be, obviously for the good :). A special mention of Mukund and Apeksha and Rishabh must come here who made my bus journeys so interesting with their stories which is still as fresh in my mind, totally made my IV happening! Also, I didn't mind missing out on the required sleep too, the knowing them phase was something I just could not miss. So, a big thank you to you guys!
And also the FEs who although faltered at the start, got better with the headcount with time(so we always knew no one was missing) and also were this continuous source of entertainment, made the bus journeys memorable.
Vannakam :P - Again, something I never anticipated. In spite of the fact that 2 out of 3 places were in tamil nadu, I never thought I would be speaking as much tamil at all. Turned out, everyone from the driver to the sightseeing guide could speak broken hindi but would any day prefer speaking tamil. So yes, I became the quintessential middleman with no commission (:P) who would speak in tamil to these people and translate it for the helpless committee members on the other side. ;) And you should see the happiness on their faces when they realize there is someone who they can converse with in tamil. In Kanyakumari, this very funny incident happened. When all of us were having coconut water and that guy charged Rs 20, I started conversing in tamil saying its too much. But the guy said he gets it at a high price so he can't reduce it anymore but he seemed pretty pleased to speak in tamil. I asked him to cut the coconut so that I could have the flesh. He did that willingly. When I asked him to do the same for my friend Parth standing next to me, He said "No,no, I did it for you, for him, nah" much to Parth's chagrin. But finally yes, he did cut for him too. And I stole the attention totally there, it was fun, I was needed everywhere, but beyond a certain point, people could talk in hindi and yet they would call me to converse.( I mean mukund here who made me talk tamil to the driver every time who spoke pretty much decent hindi. Lazy bum :P )
Also, I happened to pass right through the place where my maternal grandparents stay, got to meet them too and got loads more food to eat. Wow, I did feel at home to some extent, so cool it was :D 8-)
Madgaon Blooper- God knows why people voted this as the Kodak moment of the IV, it was hardly that. One of those things that just go wrong ,you know. The ticket said Trivandrum to Madgaon. 10 compartments and a pantry car away from the other organizers, I barely had any clue about the destination becoming Thivim as it was nearer to the hotel albeit the train would wait for lesser time there. Mostly cuz I was catching up on the sleep which I didn't have the first 6 days( forced to, by Nisha who even confiscated my phone so that I sleep, literally..lol) And considering a FE woke me up when we reached Coimbatore half an hour earlier than it was supposed to( really, these south indian railways are crazy! ), I planned not to let it happen again. Woke up at 4.30 as Madgaon was supposed to come at 5.45. Went to the FE bogey S10, woke everyone up, got them packing and ready to alight. Never suspected why the other organizers in S1 didn't turn up cuz there was a closed pantry car in between and no signal in my phone to call them. Madgaon arrived, every freaking person got down from the S9,S10,S11 bogeys with their luggage and I even made sure everyone did. I started going towards S1 when the tour operator came screaming and running towards me saying they are supposed to get back into the train. And thankfully, since the train waited for 10 minutes here, people frantically got in but everyone did and so did every piece of luggage. I was pretty embarrassed by the whole thing but most of them saw the funny side of it, Pankit praising me saying its amazing how I got all those 60 people down and up. An experience, nonetheless.
Bargaining :P- To those of you who know me, bargaining and me have been old enemies. But yet, I tried to conquer my inability to bargain in Goa. (Credit goes to Neelam who is "THE" successful bargaining idol for me) We successfully got the price of some set of shorts down from rs 250 to rs170 (although I think we could have brought it down to Rs120 at least) which is a phenomenal achievement for me, at least, a first in years. I must mention Rishabh yet again here who is another phenomenal bargainer( a lesson he taught and something I remember from neelam too, learn to walk away #tipstobargainwell ). He spoke to a tea shop guy in kanyakumari in broken english and numbers and got down the coffee price from Rs. 8 to Rs. 6 for 140 of us. And me! I must just go hide my face somewhere. :P
'Cinjal'ified pic!- And I finally got my amazing pic in sepia with the backgrounds of the vast ocean which was the immediate profile pic on fb the day I returned..I absolutely love that pic. Thank you Cinjal!
Bagha beach-The one day I had unadulterated fun..and probably the one day I spent wholly with my friends without running away in between..I decided not to go for the 'IV' and no one asked me to either, I deserved the break they said and I convinced myself too(which is a big thing really!). That was the day we had water sports which in one word was AMAZING! Plus the very necessary life jacket for the water sports only encouraged my friends to make the very-unstable-oh-I'm-gonna-fall me fall as often as possible by just tipping me with a finger! And I loved those life jackets-which apart from saving my life, let me float happily in water,bobbing up and down(sorry I know I sound like a kid but weeeee! ;-) )
After hours in the water, we had to dry and change and WOW,the feeling to change into shorts when the whole environment around you is conducive to such clothing followed by a pastry and paneer, bliss again:-)
P.S. Following those fun hours in the water, I went back to being the mad me,the one that my friends know only too well.. That night I was bubbling with happiness, dancing around when people were talking to me, acting funny, talking gibberish, basically acting drunk, a state my extc counterparts have never seen me in and never imagined either after seeing me for the first week on the IV :-P But that one day I finally felt.............Well, I wont try explaining it, trying to would belittle the very expansive feeling, but I guess its understood,no?
Awards!- A brilliant idea by rishabh( p.s. he demanded there be more than a mention of his in this post, him being a recent fan of my blog, I've somehow mentioned him thrice now, too much attention you get,boy! ), we decided to keep these awards ceremony on the last night based on whatever transpired on the iv, something everyone would know about..not rambling too much, I won two awards(for which I obviously didnt nominate myself, someone else did) the most popular person and the best nickname..now, I wont say I didnt expect the nickname one and I shared it with one of the star FE's Shero(short for Pratik Shirwaikar) because of Pankit,the guy who gave me the name and religiously calls me nothing but 'amma' and mukund spreading it amongst the FEs, I guess chota badri and gaurav doing the honours among the SEs,every1 knew me as that..and popular person,more about it later.
DJ night-Yes, the one thing that I've sorta learnt to enjoy because of the innumerable ones we have in the fests. I'm not at all a natural dancer forget a good one..I always try moving my hands and legs in some weird way which is always perceived as passable dance..whether it was on the boat cruise or at the hotel, I had decided I would do nothing but just move from side to side and maybe ape those steps in the songs itself. But then the FEs would not leave me without dancing and then the poor things say I dance good! In the hotel, I had to cross the dancing guys to go from one place to another and some group would pull me to the center, be it the se's or fe mech or te extc and I would dance...I have never and will never dance so much but yep, it was fun. :D
FEs : Now, where should I start? Ever since my first year, after seeing Divya nicely don the job of being our co-ordinator, I had imagined that if I ever get into IEEE, I would be the FE coordinator. So, it was done. Also, I remember Anna coming to our compartment and sitting talking to us when we were in FE and I was in awe of him and thought I must be a senior just like that, friendly and approachable. 42 FEs. Quite a number. They made every place look lively. Experiencing what an IV is for the first time, they brought back that excitement in me to look forward to enjoying in different places. Plus their conversations, their jokes, their codewords about the ragging kept taking me back to my first year, literally relived my first IV again. Also, I could see the respect in their eyes, that awe when they thought about the magnitude of organizing something like this, the love they had for us as coordinators...ohh, its come a whole circle for me, what anna keeps referring to, the circle of life. I must say, more than half of what I call experience in this iv is due to these guys who seemed like kids to me despite them being just 2 years younger. Its that innocence, that never ending optimistic expectations, the ability to find joy in just being on the IV, all the more reason I felt I was responsible for their well being and happiness throughout the IV. And yes, I realized this was the last IV. Told them they had two more to look forward to. They say that it won't be the same cuz we won't be there.. Ahh, FEs, I love you just for saying this to me, even if you didn't mean it. :)
Oh, and they showed their gratitude with such a touching gesture, I felt I have redeemed everything that I have ever had to through this IV. Maybe I'm getting too emotional but what is there must be mentioned. I just love my juniors. :D
My friends- If I don't mention them, then it is as good as I didn't exist on the IV. Oh, these so lovely people were that unfathomable support throughout the IV for me. The people who I thought I would completely take for granted( I guess I did to some extent too). The people who literally dragged my luggage everywhere while I roamed around in the name of committee. The people who continuously worried about my well being and made sure I was well taken care of, making sure I slept, making sure I ate and most of all, making sure I had my share of fun. They were so understanding about everything that I always made sure I came and spent time with them after finishing any kind of work. I owed it to them and I owed it to myself too. And bagha beach, they made it memorable. I love you guys(Nisha, Gandhali, Ashish, Aadish, Srinath, Amay, Parth) a lot more than I can express over here and of course, I will be grateful forever for this.
And I must mention Neelam and Harsh too, that I missed them so much on the IV and that given a chance, I would always want all of us to go on the same iv and I'm happy that their IV was a good one too. :)
Nevertheless, back to the post :P
Some things never change- And the tradition continued where the stupid sothdu extc guys decided to sleep and me and pankit followed by srinath later went from S1 to S10 back to S1 at least 5 times at 1 in the morning pasting all the college people for whom it was the first time they even knew it happens. And in my last iv, for the first time, my face was full of paste and shaving cream, so was my hair but wow, those Father Agnel guys really thought we were apparitions.(one of them actually shrank back in fear, no kidding! ) and by God, it was awesome to be the one initiating it. (But damn, I washed my face with facewash 5 times to stop it burning and Pankti amazingly shampooed my hair in that washroom without a strand touching the basin. Kudos to her! )
Day of retrospect- Last day was literally a day when the whole IV came rushing back to me. I found an amazing friend in Mukund, both of us being workaholics, as he says, someone who I've known the whole last semester being in the same committee but never managed to "know". (imagine me!) Also, I've changed his hatred of english music to madness for it! *collars raised* So, IEEE is gonna be much more fun this sem I think. :)
Also managed to know Apeksha through him and not to forget, Rishabh (Thanks to bus journeys) and I'm nowadays found quite often in the EXTC class only, as though its my own class.
I will never forget bagha beach, a place where I saw the warmth and love in all my friends' eyes and that happiness,its something that I will cherish, remember as the day I knew I was luckier than I thought.
Coming back to popular person, more than anything, it made me feel I had used my ability to talk to anyone at all to the advantage of me as one of the organizers. Made me feel I had done every possible thing left in me to make this IV as wonderful as possible, as memorable an experience for people as possible, the way my first IV had always been for me, a very special one. I really did put my heart and soul into this IV, did my best and when people meet me on the corridor and tell me they had a great time, it seems all worth it. All that running around, all that panic, every damn thing that happened.
*special mention* of Soham, THE chairperson who unfortunately couldn't be present on the IV (yes, soham, we missed your ghatiya jokes and singing!! ) but made for it by sending these encouraging messages to us for us to be enthusiastic about handling the whole IV. So, you're the best, Soham! :D *end*
*another special mention of mayuresh who would have come for the IV making it so much more memorable but GRE does take priority! A big thanks to him for his calls and messages and almost being present on the iv :) *
IF you have reached here, thank you so much for reading this whole post and a big thank you to people who encouraged me to write this and so sorry, if I missed someone out in the narration.
And its time for wordlists again. :P
It is one of the biggest events in terms of the calendar year. Pressure was immense. It has always been about managing more than 100 people. So much anticipation about something I really did not have any idea about it in terms of management and in terms of enjoying it,absolutely nil this year. Probably the horrible semester had a part to play in it. Even the thought of seeing new places right near my hometown didn't cheer me up. I sort of put this IV away as something nothing more than an event that I will put my heart and soul into making it one of the best IVs, probably the only thing that I thought. But then I would never have expected that the joy of knowing people would return back in this IV. Never thought I would be having this big smile on face even after a fortnight after I returned from it.
And I don't think a day to day narration would do justice to what I've experienced so here's to a hatke narration.
*edit* Its a pretty long post, so I hope you survive till the end of it if you haven't been for the IV. If you have, I hope you go back to those 9 days again after reading this. :D
Also, I usually don't mention names but I've differed this time as names are very important to this narration. *edit*
Bus Journeys- They have always been the same..People almost always sleep 10 minutes into the journey. And so would I. But this time, it became about what I was amazed about a year back. People, again! My class people were with me only during the first bus journey and then it was only me, my co-coordinators and the FEs. These bus journeys became what turned these guys into people who changed my perception about how this IV would be, obviously for the good :). A special mention of Mukund and Apeksha and Rishabh must come here who made my bus journeys so interesting with their stories which is still as fresh in my mind, totally made my IV happening! Also, I didn't mind missing out on the required sleep too, the knowing them phase was something I just could not miss. So, a big thank you to you guys!
And also the FEs who although faltered at the start, got better with the headcount with time(so we always knew no one was missing) and also were this continuous source of entertainment, made the bus journeys memorable.
Vannakam :P - Again, something I never anticipated. In spite of the fact that 2 out of 3 places were in tamil nadu, I never thought I would be speaking as much tamil at all. Turned out, everyone from the driver to the sightseeing guide could speak broken hindi but would any day prefer speaking tamil. So yes, I became the quintessential middleman with no commission (:P) who would speak in tamil to these people and translate it for the helpless committee members on the other side. ;) And you should see the happiness on their faces when they realize there is someone who they can converse with in tamil. In Kanyakumari, this very funny incident happened. When all of us were having coconut water and that guy charged Rs 20, I started conversing in tamil saying its too much. But the guy said he gets it at a high price so he can't reduce it anymore but he seemed pretty pleased to speak in tamil. I asked him to cut the coconut so that I could have the flesh. He did that willingly. When I asked him to do the same for my friend Parth standing next to me, He said "No,no, I did it for you, for him, nah" much to Parth's chagrin. But finally yes, he did cut for him too. And I stole the attention totally there, it was fun, I was needed everywhere, but beyond a certain point, people could talk in hindi and yet they would call me to converse.( I mean mukund here who made me talk tamil to the driver every time who spoke pretty much decent hindi. Lazy bum :P )
Also, I happened to pass right through the place where my maternal grandparents stay, got to meet them too and got loads more food to eat. Wow, I did feel at home to some extent, so cool it was :D 8-)
Madgaon Blooper- God knows why people voted this as the Kodak moment of the IV, it was hardly that. One of those things that just go wrong ,you know. The ticket said Trivandrum to Madgaon. 10 compartments and a pantry car away from the other organizers, I barely had any clue about the destination becoming Thivim as it was nearer to the hotel albeit the train would wait for lesser time there. Mostly cuz I was catching up on the sleep which I didn't have the first 6 days( forced to, by Nisha who even confiscated my phone so that I sleep, literally..lol) And considering a FE woke me up when we reached Coimbatore half an hour earlier than it was supposed to( really, these south indian railways are crazy! ), I planned not to let it happen again. Woke up at 4.30 as Madgaon was supposed to come at 5.45. Went to the FE bogey S10, woke everyone up, got them packing and ready to alight. Never suspected why the other organizers in S1 didn't turn up cuz there was a closed pantry car in between and no signal in my phone to call them. Madgaon arrived, every freaking person got down from the S9,S10,S11 bogeys with their luggage and I even made sure everyone did. I started going towards S1 when the tour operator came screaming and running towards me saying they are supposed to get back into the train. And thankfully, since the train waited for 10 minutes here, people frantically got in but everyone did and so did every piece of luggage. I was pretty embarrassed by the whole thing but most of them saw the funny side of it, Pankit praising me saying its amazing how I got all those 60 people down and up. An experience, nonetheless.
Bargaining :P- To those of you who know me, bargaining and me have been old enemies. But yet, I tried to conquer my inability to bargain in Goa. (Credit goes to Neelam who is "THE" successful bargaining idol for me) We successfully got the price of some set of shorts down from rs 250 to rs170 (although I think we could have brought it down to Rs120 at least) which is a phenomenal achievement for me, at least, a first in years. I must mention Rishabh yet again here who is another phenomenal bargainer( a lesson he taught and something I remember from neelam too, learn to walk away #tipstobargainwell ). He spoke to a tea shop guy in kanyakumari in broken english and numbers and got down the coffee price from Rs. 8 to Rs. 6 for 140 of us. And me! I must just go hide my face somewhere. :P
'Cinjal'ified pic!- And I finally got my amazing pic in sepia with the backgrounds of the vast ocean which was the immediate profile pic on fb the day I returned..I absolutely love that pic. Thank you Cinjal!
Bagha beach-The one day I had unadulterated fun..and probably the one day I spent wholly with my friends without running away in between..I decided not to go for the 'IV' and no one asked me to either, I deserved the break they said and I convinced myself too(which is a big thing really!). That was the day we had water sports which in one word was AMAZING! Plus the very necessary life jacket for the water sports only encouraged my friends to make the very-unstable-oh-I'm-gonna-fall me fall as often as possible by just tipping me with a finger! And I loved those life jackets-which apart from saving my life, let me float happily in water,bobbing up and down(sorry I know I sound like a kid but weeeee! ;-) )
After hours in the water, we had to dry and change and WOW,the feeling to change into shorts when the whole environment around you is conducive to such clothing followed by a pastry and paneer, bliss again:-)
P.S. Following those fun hours in the water, I went back to being the mad me,the one that my friends know only too well.. That night I was bubbling with happiness, dancing around when people were talking to me, acting funny, talking gibberish, basically acting drunk, a state my extc counterparts have never seen me in and never imagined either after seeing me for the first week on the IV :-P But that one day I finally felt.............Well, I wont try explaining it, trying to would belittle the very expansive feeling, but I guess its understood,no?
Awards!- A brilliant idea by rishabh( p.s. he demanded there be more than a mention of his in this post, him being a recent fan of my blog, I've somehow mentioned him thrice now, too much attention you get,boy! ), we decided to keep these awards ceremony on the last night based on whatever transpired on the iv, something everyone would know about..not rambling too much, I won two awards(for which I obviously didnt nominate myself, someone else did) the most popular person and the best nickname..now, I wont say I didnt expect the nickname one and I shared it with one of the star FE's Shero(short for Pratik Shirwaikar) because of Pankit,the guy who gave me the name and religiously calls me nothing but 'amma' and mukund spreading it amongst the FEs, I guess chota badri and gaurav doing the honours among the SEs,every1 knew me as that..and popular person,more about it later.
DJ night-Yes, the one thing that I've sorta learnt to enjoy because of the innumerable ones we have in the fests. I'm not at all a natural dancer forget a good one..I always try moving my hands and legs in some weird way which is always perceived as passable dance..whether it was on the boat cruise or at the hotel, I had decided I would do nothing but just move from side to side and maybe ape those steps in the songs itself. But then the FEs would not leave me without dancing and then the poor things say I dance good! In the hotel, I had to cross the dancing guys to go from one place to another and some group would pull me to the center, be it the se's or fe mech or te extc and I would dance...I have never and will never dance so much but yep, it was fun. :D
FEs : Now, where should I start? Ever since my first year, after seeing Divya nicely don the job of being our co-ordinator, I had imagined that if I ever get into IEEE, I would be the FE coordinator. So, it was done. Also, I remember Anna coming to our compartment and sitting talking to us when we were in FE and I was in awe of him and thought I must be a senior just like that, friendly and approachable. 42 FEs. Quite a number. They made every place look lively. Experiencing what an IV is for the first time, they brought back that excitement in me to look forward to enjoying in different places. Plus their conversations, their jokes, their codewords about the ragging kept taking me back to my first year, literally relived my first IV again. Also, I could see the respect in their eyes, that awe when they thought about the magnitude of organizing something like this, the love they had for us as coordinators...ohh, its come a whole circle for me, what anna keeps referring to, the circle of life. I must say, more than half of what I call experience in this iv is due to these guys who seemed like kids to me despite them being just 2 years younger. Its that innocence, that never ending optimistic expectations, the ability to find joy in just being on the IV, all the more reason I felt I was responsible for their well being and happiness throughout the IV. And yes, I realized this was the last IV. Told them they had two more to look forward to. They say that it won't be the same cuz we won't be there.. Ahh, FEs, I love you just for saying this to me, even if you didn't mean it. :)
Oh, and they showed their gratitude with such a touching gesture, I felt I have redeemed everything that I have ever had to through this IV. Maybe I'm getting too emotional but what is there must be mentioned. I just love my juniors. :D
My friends- If I don't mention them, then it is as good as I didn't exist on the IV. Oh, these so lovely people were that unfathomable support throughout the IV for me. The people who I thought I would completely take for granted( I guess I did to some extent too). The people who literally dragged my luggage everywhere while I roamed around in the name of committee. The people who continuously worried about my well being and made sure I was well taken care of, making sure I slept, making sure I ate and most of all, making sure I had my share of fun. They were so understanding about everything that I always made sure I came and spent time with them after finishing any kind of work. I owed it to them and I owed it to myself too. And bagha beach, they made it memorable. I love you guys(Nisha, Gandhali, Ashish, Aadish, Srinath, Amay, Parth) a lot more than I can express over here and of course, I will be grateful forever for this.
And I must mention Neelam and Harsh too, that I missed them so much on the IV and that given a chance, I would always want all of us to go on the same iv and I'm happy that their IV was a good one too. :)
Nevertheless, back to the post :P
Some things never change- And the tradition continued where the stupid sothdu extc guys decided to sleep and me and pankit followed by srinath later went from S1 to S10 back to S1 at least 5 times at 1 in the morning pasting all the college people for whom it was the first time they even knew it happens. And in my last iv, for the first time, my face was full of paste and shaving cream, so was my hair but wow, those Father Agnel guys really thought we were apparitions.(one of them actually shrank back in fear, no kidding! ) and by God, it was awesome to be the one initiating it. (But damn, I washed my face with facewash 5 times to stop it burning and Pankti amazingly shampooed my hair in that washroom without a strand touching the basin. Kudos to her! )
Day of retrospect- Last day was literally a day when the whole IV came rushing back to me. I found an amazing friend in Mukund, both of us being workaholics, as he says, someone who I've known the whole last semester being in the same committee but never managed to "know". (imagine me!) Also, I've changed his hatred of english music to madness for it! *collars raised* So, IEEE is gonna be much more fun this sem I think. :)
Also managed to know Apeksha through him and not to forget, Rishabh (Thanks to bus journeys) and I'm nowadays found quite often in the EXTC class only, as though its my own class.
I will never forget bagha beach, a place where I saw the warmth and love in all my friends' eyes and that happiness,its something that I will cherish, remember as the day I knew I was luckier than I thought.
Coming back to popular person, more than anything, it made me feel I had used my ability to talk to anyone at all to the advantage of me as one of the organizers. Made me feel I had done every possible thing left in me to make this IV as wonderful as possible, as memorable an experience for people as possible, the way my first IV had always been for me, a very special one. I really did put my heart and soul into this IV, did my best and when people meet me on the corridor and tell me they had a great time, it seems all worth it. All that running around, all that panic, every damn thing that happened.
*special mention* of Soham, THE chairperson who unfortunately couldn't be present on the IV (yes, soham, we missed your ghatiya jokes and singing!! ) but made for it by sending these encouraging messages to us for us to be enthusiastic about handling the whole IV. So, you're the best, Soham! :D *end*
*another special mention of mayuresh who would have come for the IV making it so much more memorable but GRE does take priority! A big thanks to him for his calls and messages and almost being present on the iv :) *
IF you have reached here, thank you so much for reading this whole post and a big thank you to people who encouraged me to write this and so sorry, if I missed someone out in the narration.
And its time for wordlists again. :P
