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My
dad said it. My class teacher repeated it. My tuition master cribbed
about it. All my friends dreamt about it. “ It” was to pass
through the gates of IIT. Well, so I couldn’t even crack the
unsolved questions of M L Khanna but I did crack an IIT bastion .....I
managed to attend Rendezvous 2k (Sep 21-24). This cultural festival of IIT-Delhi is a 4 day extravaganza. It makes us Non-IITans realise that our IIT counterparts may work hard, but they party just as hard! Rendezvous 2k kicked off on a serious note, with the traditional lamp lighting ceremony conducted by the Chief Guest, Mr Arun Jaitley. From there it was a wild roller-coaster ride.The air crackled with excitement - there was so much to do and so less time! The only crib was that some of the formal events coincided with the informal stuff . “Out here it is very tough to keep to up with all the events” says Shilpi from Stephens. Informals were very popular, and most of the events were swept by the dudes from IIT. Rahul Aggarwal won graffiti, Rakesh Kumar weight lifting and Arbit Ahuja the love letter writing contest (hmm... the shortage of girls in the IIT campus must give him extra practice in this area!). However IIT had to bow down to Kirorimal College’s dramatic society in the skit round. KM didn’t prove quite as lucky in the dramatics competition and lost out to College of Business Studies. 
Formal events like the theme based Choreography and Boogie-Woogie were the most happening. The girls’ colleges dominated both the events with LSR hogging the spotlight in boogie-woogie (Miranda got their revenge by winning the choreo). College of Vocational Studies was declared the undisputed winners in the fashion show ‘Lifestyles’ and the hosts had to console themselves with the first runners-up prize. The Indian and Western music competitions were super - Ajay Bandhoo of Zakir Hussain College took the title of best performer (Indian) while the irrepressible Kirorimal crowd bagged the best Indian music group award. Annette
Phillip of LSR dominated the Western music solo while Hindu’s
Pooja Nagpal was declared the best performer in the Indian music
classical genre.
 The Wind Tunnel
was crowded as usual as the ‘between events’ junta gheraoing
the dancing area. Here, the DJ really made the crowd rock - from
techno to jhankar, from rock to pop, from indipop to bhangra, he
left no record unscratched. Funzone was another place that was alive
and kicking. The disco ambience was awesome - complete with lights,
lasers and a big screen showing live pictures of the swingers on
the floor. |
The professional nights were cool - Amjad Ali Khan stirred the ragas
on the classical night, Indian Ocean and Mrigya created waves in
the fusion night while Rock-turned-Indipop group Euphoria enthralled
- playing 25 songs non-stop! Some enthu ‘n’ talented IITians
also sang on stage and were much appreciated.
But the biggest head-turning event, seeti-maar event was the crowning of Mr. and Mrs. Rendezvous. And guess what brains and brawn can co-exist! Yep, the oldest myth in the world was proved baseless when IIT dude Amit Mangotra won the Mr. Rendezvous. Miranda House’s Rashmika Prasad bagged the Ms Rendezvous title. Ms beautiful was won by Parul Malhotra.  The event attracted the maximum junta and sadly enuff, guys who baked in the sun for 2 hours (in order to gain entry) were turned away. One Hindu chap was particularly irritated and was heard mumbling,”........on one side we (India) give IITians this huge campus in the middle of the city and they run out of our country. We don’t say a thing. But this is the limit. Now they don’t even let us even enter the hall where Ms Rrendezvous is taking place. This is really bad.” Hey, that gives you some (junk) food for thought. Saving the best for the last - as usual the Rock Show didn’t disappoint and apna Dilli’s Parikrama - Live show veterans and perhaps the best rock band in India, sizzled onstage. Alright so like all other fests, Rendezvous had its share of botch-ups. Postponement of events, overcrowding, lack of co-ordination .....blah..blah, now haven’t we heard that before?? Puja from LSR says, “ The festival last year was much better. It was like I wasted my time here. I could have prepared for the CAT!” But besides the eternal cribbers most would agree these were just the minor hiccups in a festival of this scale and magnitude. Overall it was a memorable event. Kudos to Chief Co-ordinator Kapil Gupta and his 11 member core team, 125 activity heads, 700 volunteers and Prof Kushal Sen.
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