Mridang – 2011

Photographs

January 21 2011: The Annual Cultural Festival of IIM Indore today had a grand inauguration. The campus was thrown open for participants from all other colleges and universities to participate in a range of events and activities and saw a huge turnout. During the inauguration, the Director of the Institute, Dr. N. Ravichandran gave nuggets of wisdom to the students. He stressed upon the fact that India today has no dearth of ideas, what is the need of the hour is action, especially from young people like the audience he was addressing to. He inspired the students by drawing in a few strands of Swami Vivekananda’s life and emphasized that the ability to control one’s senses leads to success and prosperity. He said the launch of the second edition of Mridang has seen a huge effort put in by the entire student community of Indore and the event has now taken a stand on its own. He hopes to see Mridang grow by leaps and bounds and go international in the years to come. Later in the day, Mr Paresh Mokashi addressed the audience at length talking about his struggles as a filmmaker, his admiration for contemporary directors like Ashutosh Gowarikar and hugely praised Lagaan. He related a few stories from Harishchandrachi factory, which are difficult to pull off yet hilarious. He shared his passion for delving deep into mythological works like the Vedas, Mahabharata and Ramayana enlightening on the nuances of Tulsi Das and Valmiki’s Ramayana. IIM Indore plans to have Mr. Paresh Mokashi on campus later in the year again.

The first day of Mridang had a lot of quizzing and literary events going on in campus. The first quiz was a sports quiz in which twenty participants from outside participated apart from internal participation. The first literary event on campus was creative writing and saw many participants participate in it. The quizzing bag has a general quiz, lone wolf for individual participants and a biz quiz in store. For people who can talk nonstop the event JAM – Just a Minute will be an attraction, which will entail speaking extempore on a whacky topic given to the participants. Pot pourri is another interesting event, which is an amalgamation of a host of events of the nature of dumb charades and the like. The event of treasure hunt had thirty five teams participating. The vocals competition had fifty participants. For distortion, twenty selected teams will be performing in the prelims round. The dancing event Lasya Mudra, the group dance event, will have nine selected teams out of thirty-five which performed.

The first day of Mridang also featured venture sports in the campus. Rolling inside a transparent ball and swinging across the academic block gave a panoramic view and attracted a lot of audience and the participants enjoyed it to the fullest. Zorbing and the flying fox were some of the sports that were offered at nominal prices and this was leveraged by the students to get their dose of the excitement under supervised safety.

The choreo event Mudra concluded with the entire Planet-I tapping their feet and enjoying themselves well. The rock band competition Distortion selected six teams out of the twenty selected during prelims for the finals who had the golden opportunity to perform in front of the famous rock band Parikrama. The teams selected were Manifest, Avalanche, Bull engine, Life, Risfing culture and Dementia.

January 22, 2011: The second day of Mridang featured a range of singing and dancing events. The final round of Dhwani was judged by RJ Samir, Abha Chaurasia and Vibha Chaurasia. The audience was mesmerized to the Hindi and English songs performed by the participants and the judges had a tough time selecting the winners. IIM Indore had two of their students Rohit and Hari hold the first and third position respectively while a singer from outside who sang an original composition of his garnered the second prize. The street dancing event entertained the spectators with AIT Pune bagging the first award and IET Indore the second.

The treasure hunt event, Kayamanan, had the six selected teams out of thirty running all around various parts of Indore hunting for clues and trying to connect them together to find their treasure. The event was extremely interesting with different teams having a different task assigned. One team went around the Rau market trying to find different elements of a necklace and string them together. While another team had to draw unique customers to a few shops in the Chappan area. The final round took place in C-21 mall where the clues had been hidden in the shops. After this, one round within the campus was conducted for a few top teams based on the rounds earlier.

Rangoli, 3-D Collage and face painting also featured in the day, which had many participants.

A guest lecture was given by accomplished rural reporter P Sainath. In the quiz events, various rounds were conducted for an entertainment and a general quiz.

January 23 2011: The final day of Mridang was vibrant with many events going on in the campus simultaneously. The finals of Cult Icon had six finalists present their varied talent in front of the judges. The crown this time was taken away by Akansha from Truba college. She sang, danced and acted in front of the judges, one of them an RJ Charu from Radio Mirchi. Her performance was as brilliant that the RJ ended up offering her a position in case she was interested. There was a solo-dancing event Abhinayam – a part of Lasya. There were a huge number of participants with spot registrations for Abhinayam and they performed to the praise of a packed open air theatre. The highlight of the day was the fashion show event Laavanya that had around 8-10 teams participating, including the winning teams of fashion shows that have been happening in Indore in the past. The IIM Indore team also walked up the ramp, though not as part of the competition. The initial round was a general one and the subsequent one was based on the theme seasons. The spectators witnessed glamorous models walking on stage.

On the other side, a photography workshop was conducted by distinguished photographer Mr. Hemshankar Pathak. The workshop was equally for newbies as for professionals. He threw light on various technicalities for clicking a good photograph while highlighting certain aesthetic aspects. He illustrated these technicalities by many of his photographs, which mesmerized the audience. He spoke about composition, lighting aspects etc. He closed the classroom session by inviting all of the attendees to his photography exhibition, which is to be held in February, and then went for a walk about with the budding photographers. There was also a photography contest for which photographs clicked during the day and within the campus could be submitted.

The quizzing team conducted a business and technology quiz, which had various rounds. Six teams were selected out of eight-ten teams for the final round. A team from IIM Indore bagged the first prize.

For artists, there was mehendi designing and graffiti art competition in the campus, which was loved both by the participants as well as the spectators.

Later in the day, a jam-packed auditorium was enthralled by a fusion concert by Paravayu.