The Memory Remains ...

No, I am not going to write about the very popular Metallica number. Spring Fest is over ... the hangover continues...

Spring Fest 2005 will live forever in my memory as my best SF, that despite not being able to answer a single Pernab Mukherjee quiz question on stage!

It all began on 20th with the bumps and cake all over my face. When I looked at the mirror, I actually shrieked. I am not exactly in love with my face, but I have never seen it in a more unregonizable state. In the morning, I met IToldYouSo, ManChild, DeepBlueSea, TimelessClassic, and Mr(s)Seth. And the rest of us, Gramophone, SpontaneousDancer, SuicidalTendenciesPersonnified and WhyAmIStillSingle (yours truly!). I never knew you made such great friends over a weekend. Now I do!

Parikrama rocked the first night. It did, it did, it did! And when you listen to 20,000 watts of music from 10 feet away, you start swaying automatically, unintentionally, unknowingly and shout your lungs out. In fact, my conerned family actually thought a girl with a husky voice had picked up the phone when they heard me after the show! Yes, it was that *good*! DeepBlueSea, a rock enthusiast, sure enjoyed the show! This was the only day when I actually slept early. (and that would be .. 2 in the morning !) Nights are longer in winter. Point taken.

The next evening was the high point of the weekend. The zenith of frenzy bobbing in the IndianOcean with only a String(s) to keep you from capsizing is hard to come by, but it did on that evening. [Strings says it was their best show ever!]I could actually feel the stars up there envy the stars in our hands, we were star-struck, the Milky Way seemingly a feeble semblence of the galaxy in the TOAT (Tagore Open Air Theatre). That moment rules highest, along with the view from the woods, not flora but of fauna, the jungle of men, the men in the jungle! We danced till we dropped dead, till we could shake no more. And the thought of taking an IQ test after hours of ecstatic dancing still beats me! We were dead tired by the end of it, but still manage to brave the cold till (almost) dawn! You do not feel cold in good company. I will always remember that!

Fine Frenzy, the fashion parade, which used to be a "missable" event till last year was made special courtesy an awesome performance by BeatBusters. The crowd was actually dying to see the fillers! Then we had our moment right on top of Kharagpur, the cusp of the jungle, where Mr.SuicidalTendenciesPersonnified actually got his name. Clouds at night can take the shape of dragons. Try it sometime!

The next day, it grieves my heart to announce, I qualified to go up to the stage during the BizQuiz, but I soon realized that my General Awareness is no good for serious quizzing. Lesson Learnt. A preliminary round where a score of 5 on 25 qualifies you for the final rounds bears testimony to the incredible knowledge base of the quizmaster, very much expected when it is Pernab Mukherjee. I may have answered 3 of the 5 questions which helped us to qualify for the finals, but I felt dumb on stage. I am going to make a concerted effort to not qualify for his quizzes in future. Moral of the story: Never make a fool of yourself by your own prowess.

This is the first time I danced during Perpz, and loved it, despite the dust and the choking I was feeling. Another few hours spent analyzing various quotients from Emotional to Relationship (where I got my name!) and we proceeded to the Zero performance. Many will disagree with me, a few might even run after me with hockey sticks, but I hated the performance. The only words I could make out in the songs was M*****F***. The growling and the shrieking was there in Parikrama too, but it was music, not arbiraty vessels striking against one another. I am no game for Heavy Metal and Death Metal. Another realization.

The night wore on, we stubbornly refused to let it go. It was another session on the terrace albeit a lower one. The security guards sure were miffed, Paradise was lost as I could not learn enough about Milton. The tea at Chhedis had its own savoury taste, and I wait for another year, another Spring Fest, another hot Maggi on a cold wintry night.

Spring Fest is over, realization dawns. It was a dream, a four-day dream, of nocturnal living and diurnal dancing, of sawtooth slopes, of stopping the train, of enlightenment on stage, of stars that shone, of dragons in the sky, of trancending the physical world, of stepping into the realm of the frenzied nothingness, of rocking music, of silent word-wars, of sanyasa on an old small tower, of titanic with a *guy*, of growling at tigers, of jumping over walls - real and emotional, of unseen mornings, of teetotallers being on a high, of matkis that would be cherished, of the memory that will remain ...

Life is queer, its back to reality, this poem [courtesy Chirayu and Emergic] clearly proves the point:

It is morning in Africa and
As the sun rises over the plains
The gazelle awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the fastest lion
It will be dead.

It is morning in Africa and
The lion awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the slowest gazelle
It will die.

It is morning in Africa and you had better start running.