NITT Diaries — Chapter 3
The First Stage
I couldn’t stop biting my nails. The pressure and hype building up to our performance was eating me up and I kept asking myself the same question over and over again, “When will this wait end?”. That’s when my eyes fell on the Aaveg Core Member, Sundar. He patted my shoulder and asked with a gleam in his eyes, “Are you ready to perform tonight?” and my mind wandered away to the last time he had said those exact same words, in a not-so-different scenario.
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”Are you ready to perform tonight?”, the Mechanical senior Sundar Raghavan asked me. I was sitting backstage, unable to stop myself from shaking due to the anxiety of the unknown. After all, it was my first performance in college, and what a way to start things off in college — I was going on stage for Freshers. I saw another senior, Mona, running around frantically, checking and rechecking the fact that all our performances were ready and didn’t have content that could destroy the ‘sanctity’ of the institution. Apparently, the front row was filled with ‘distinguished guests’, which freaked me out a lot more. Looking back, I remembered how I had come to find out that her name was Mona, and trust me, the process wasn’t even remotely easy.
It was a special day of orientation and we all were awaiting the promised surprise with bated breath. This senior walked up to the stage and announced something that I had been looking forward to in college — The Freshers’ Night. It was claimed to be “A chance to prove your mettle and show yourself to the world; Grab the spotlight ’cause this time is yours. “
I quickly realised this was my chance to shine and decided to take the first step towards ‘grabbing the spotlight’. I filled out the Google Doc. After breezing through the first few questions, I was stuck pondering over the last question though which asked,
“You’ve got 2 sentences to write whatever you want. We’ll be judging you.”
Bruce walked into the room then, peeked into my laptop and said the first thing that came to his mind, “1. I’m not answerable to you. 2. That’s my answer to this question.” I started smiling, looked at Bruce in awe, and immediately typed it out and clicked the Submit button.
The next morning, I woke up to a pleasant surprise. ‘Congrats, you’ve been selected for the group discussion round. Be there at CCD by 6 pm’.
I couldn’t help but have a stupid grin stretching across my face. The rest of the day passed in a blur till 6 pm. I reached CCD and found someone leaving. I tapped her on the shoulder wanting to gain some insights as to what was going on. When she turned, I realised she was the same girl I had met on my first day and the very reason I had fallen face first on the ground. I gathered my almost non-existent wits and asked her, “Hey, I’m here for the GD. Did you just have it?” She smiled a little and said, “Yep, I just did.” As if she could read my thoughts, she continued, “And no. No more details. Just go in and have fun.” As she started walking away, I somehow stammered “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Sneha.”
A few moments later, I was called for my GD. I was completely prepared for a topic like “Trump has reshaped America’s foreign relations and not for the better.”, And you can imagine my surprise when my topic was “Which is rarer-Girls in Mechanical or Rain in Trichy?” I had a gala time discussing and we finally decided that regardless of what was rarer, insects were very common.
What followed was a personal interview the next day. The most interesting part was this segment where I had to find out the names of the two seniors, among them was the friendly senior who had made the announcement for Freshers. After asking multiple people to no avail, an idea struck me. I immediately checked the Aaveg website, and voila! She was Mona Raghavan and the other was Balaji Iyer. The senior who was taking my PI seemed pretty impressed and I was confident about my selection.
After overcoming a few more hurdles, at around 1 am on a Friday Night, I received a call saying I got selected to perform on stage and I couldn’t control my excitement. I almost woke Rajeev up from his sleep (thankfully the disaster was avoided). That’s when it struck me that I needed to have something to perform on stage. I was going to do the only thing I could do well, dancing. Freshers was on a Saturday and it was probably the first Saturday morning I woke up early because I started freaking out about the dance.
On the D-day, as I left my room, I was showered with flowers by Rajeev who murmured auspicious prayers all the way to Barn. Inside, they ushered the 8 of us backstage, 4 girls and 4 boys. Sitting with the finalists, I was feeling quite awkward about everything, till I saw her. Sneha, wearing a black dress with leggings underneath, something so simple and yet looked so elegant and graceful on her. When her chance came, she owned the stage as she played the guitar and sang her heart out. All of the crowd couldn’t help but scream for her, and neither could I.
Time passed by and all of a sudden, I heard my name being called out for my performance. After all the amazing talents by my competitors, I started getting cold feet. That was when she gave a bright smile and told me “All the best. I know you can to do it.”, and just like that I felt I could do it.
The stage was a blur to me. I lost myself completely as ‘Balam Pichkari’ started blasting from the speakers. Before I knew it, I was done with my performance and waited for the other finalists to join me on stage. They started giving us impromptu tasks and mine was ‘Spin a Yarn’. I was befuddled when I realised I had to connect words like Narendra Modi, cow and milk. It was all going smoothly till the next word that popped up was ‘kitchen’. Without giving it much thought, I said, “The ladies were making tea for the men of the house using milk.” The moment I said those words, the crowd went berserk. And not in a good way.
The booing was maximum from Bay 0 which was filled with girls. It didn’t matter what I said after that, the booing continued. Just when I thought I had a chance at the crown, something like this had to happen. By the time the last word popped up, I’m sure almost no one could hear what I was saying over all that shouting. I could see that the judges were ready to tear me apart.
The first question they asked “Why did the word ‘ladies’ pop up in your mind when you heard kitchen? Are you actually that shallow or did you think that would make you seem cool?” and the cheering from the audience was tremendous. All I wanted to do was run a million miles away and never look back. I didn’t even understand how to respond and said that, “It was a slip of tongue and wasn’t intended to be sexist.” A girl from the audience stood up and said, “Don’t make your lack of creativity as an excuse for that sexist remark, it just shows how foolish and narrow minded you are.” I could feel my face turning red and I immediately stepped down from the stage and walked out of the Barn hall.
It wasn’t what I expected, neither was it how I wanted to portray myself, after all those fun filled prelim rounds. Inside, I could hear a string of songs but I make myself go back in. The worst part was no one even tried to stop me when I walked out, though I know I deserved it. The results came out a couple of minutes later and no, I wasn’t surprised. Sneha had won the title of Ms. Fresher, while I lost it to Manoj Prakash, the mimicry artist.
Oh, boy, was I disappointed! After all those daily visits to CCD, I lost the title only because he did his task well while I didn’t have a filter over my mouth before talking. I was sulking in a corner when Sneha came and gave me a handshake. I was actually a little surprised at the gesture and started blabbering that “I didn’t actually mean it.” With a soft smile, she said, “I know, you didn’t really seem that kind of a guy. Stop whining so much. You went up on stage in front of all those people, be proud.”
I muttered under my breath, “All they know is that I’m an insanely sexist person with ideals stuck in the 19th century I guess.” After some silence, she responded “It’ll be fine.” This made my day just a bit better. Just when I thought maybe it all actually was fine, another Aaveg senior went up on stage and announced that there would be no good food or DJ Night and I couldn’t help but wonder, could this day get any worse. All of us left to our hostels with sunken faces and our hopes crushed. Bruce walked into the room and said, “This ain’t the worst day for me at least.”
“Of course not, you weren’t the one who was brutally humiliated on stage.”, I replied back in a grumpy tone. “But my situation is going to be worse. I’ve just been called for an ‘interaction’ with my seniors.” and even Rajeev couldn’t help but hide his shock at that.
