CULTURE EVENTS CAMPUS ADVENTURE HORROR TALES FROM COLLEGE FESTS
Fests are supposed to be fun — and they are. But not for those planning them. Students share stories of the chaos behind the curtains CATCH IT LIVE
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For a Delhi University (DU) student, a college fest means merriment — behind the scenes though, lie days of tension and not-sonice anecdotes. Here are some such tales shared by them.
Heemant, a third year student of Ramjas College, narrates an incident: “A government firm promised us in writing that they’d give us a sponsorship for 2-3 lakh. We nagged them for two months, and they kept telling us aaj nahi kal (not today, tomorrow), anda finally refused to give it.”
Junhai Prabhakar, an English Honours student and the student secretary of Dyal Singh College, talks about last year’s fest that featured Punjabi singers Babbal Rai and Jassi Gill. “Everything hadh been finalised, but just a week before the fest, Jassi Gill’s publicist (after receiving the cheque) told us that they won’t be able to make it because Jassi was getting married two days after the event. And we couldn’t get anyone else as a replacement at such a short notice. Till date, I feel that if the organisers knew all this beforehand, they could have told us about it . At least we couldc have invited someone else.”e
The treasurer of Lady Shri RamR College, Smitha Sabu, recalls the incident of 2015 when standup comic Kanan Gill was to perform at their fest, but was hospitalised at the last moment. After much running around, they roped in the band Raet, just 12 hours before the event. She says, “That last minute chaos gave us heart attacks.”
This year there is another problem. Smitha says, “People who had promised to give cash by first week of December have refused to do so after making us wait for a month. Also with ` 24,000 withdrawal limit, it’s getting difficult to keep cash in hand, and we have to fall back on mobile payment apps and going cashless.”
Aayush from Sri Venkateswara College says, “During our last fest, there was a heavy downpour on the day singer Sunidhi Chauhan was to perform. Unlike SRCC, we hadn’t done the required waterproofing. So it got cancelled. But after much cajoling, we salvaged it by shifting the performance to a different day.”