Battle of the fests

Local colleges are having bigger festivals than ever before.

FEST ZEST: Creativity and enthusiasm are at an all- time high

in these huge college fests

IT’S that time of the year again when city youths gear up for college festivals. Right from the basic groundwork to the last minute preparations for the D-day, students put in their 100 per cent to make their college fest a huge success. A look at the city fests proves that, with each passing year, the fests are getting bigger and better.

Fests are not just growing in terms of the number of participants, it is big money too. Anirban Sengupta, core member of the event committee at Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development, says, “The entire budget of the annual fest Neev is 60 lakhs. It’s the biggest college event in Pune, and the second biggest B-school festival in India with over 7,000 students witnessing the mega event.” The fest, which concluded recently, had rock band Parikrama perform live at their campus. The various competitions held as a part of the fest included business case study competitions, battle of bands and a three-day competition in search for the best student manager of the country. The prize money for the competition is 2 lakhs.

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Another fest that has caught the attention of Puneites is Crescendo, a pan-India event solely managed by students of ISB&M. Last year, the college fest saw the likes of Pritam, Javed Ali, Atif Aslam and Mohit Chauhan perform live. So, which celebrity guest is going to set the stage on fire this year? Aditya Singh, main coordinator of the fest, tells us, “We have invited Mika, K ay Kay and Fardikot. You will see one of them perform for us.” Highlighting the other aspects of the event, Aditya says, “This year, our theme is Go Green. We plan to include water dancing, de-virtualisation of a social networking site and a Rajasthani theme decor.” The total budget for the event is approximately to 50 lakhs. 

While most of the fests deal with one particular aspect, students at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology want to stand out by creating the right mix of all activities. They aptly called their fest Melange, which includes sports, technical, and co-curricular activities. Melange has become quite a rage with the students. “Last year, we had Agnee for our grand finale. We are inviting Indian Ocean to conclude the seven-day festival this year,” says Parth Kulkarni, third year B-tech student. The fest attracts more than 30,000 students and they spend over 40 lakh for the event. The other activities being held at the fest include a robotics competition, a dance competition and a variety of sports tournaments. 

While colleges try to keep the glamour and fun quotient high with celeb talks and music concerts, they also develop interesting ideas that make their event stand apart from the rest. Ajinkya Kulthe, chairpersonstudents council at SAE India-MIT Collegiate Branch enthusiastically shares, “Our fest, which is titled Axlerate 2011 is going to be bigger and better for sure. We are working on the theme of nurturing growth. The thought behind the theme is to facilitate the symbiotic growth of technology and nature. We have also invited a few corporate honchos and environmentalists to enlighten us further.” Sports enjoy a lot of attention among students. So, 800 teams from 70 colleges coming together for one such grand event, comes as no surprise. “Zest 2011 is a national level sports event with over 16,000 students participating,” tells Harish Bawaskar, BTech mechanical engineering student of College of Engineering, Pune. Highlighting the sports activities that are a part of the fest, Tejas Inamdar, head of Zest 2011, COEP, says, “We are including sports activities spanning from baseball, bridge, badminton, athletics, football, water polo, chess, rowing, cricket, kabaddi, to kho-kho among others.”

The energy that you feel in the colleges during these fests is contagious and one cannot help but get carried away with it. That’s the ‘larger than life’ story of these college fests. What’s your story?