The Saga of Culturals......

In my previous write-up, I had promised a deeper insight of what I feel about culturals. So, here it goes....

College life is undoubtedly the most important, the most blissful part of a student. All those leg-pulling, nick naming, route-pottufying acts are inseparable. And college culturals.... chance e illa. It s jus the wonderful time of the college life.

Since I have started talking about the culturals, let me stick to it. We can actually divide the whole ‘culturals-thing’ into 3 phases.

1) Pre- Culturals

2) Culturals

3) post-Culturals

The pre-culturals notion has various parts. First comes the tension of deciding who does what. And let me tell u... it s not tat easy. The so-called ‘rivalry’ (I sometimes do wonder how come no one takes up a knife and stabs the other) and those u-r-doing-it-wrong attitudes... Gosh! The worst part is yet to come... MONEY. Everyone has to pool in money to meet the needs. Now.. Don think tat we r running a family. We r jus going to participate in a 2-day culturals. Ya.. So we go around collecting money (mind u.. nothing less than 500 is taken).

Then, there is this selection of the teacher. Rules say that no external help is allowed in the culturals. But students never listen. They go on a hunting spree and.. There is a rumor. Prabhu Deva will be helping our team the next culturals. Isn’t that great? Shucks man... the best part is, after paying 8K to the choreographer... we don’t even bother to attend the practice. What is more important? Practice or a movie in Sathyam?

The Culturals... The D-Day arrives at last. With great pomp, u try to enter the gates and a volunteer stops you and says... get an Rs10 worth pass! It is of course not a big deal for those who have already dandam-azhuthified 500 bucks. But still...U bunk classes.. u have ur excuse-“mam, I have to practice for street-play!” u of course don want us to loose out. Do u mam?

Its not over yet. After entering the stadium, to your dismay you find half the seats occupied by some other department and u can of course catch a glimpse of few heads belonging to ur department standing and fighting to grab a few rows.

The best part is... u can watch ur favorite star close by. But of course, everyone can not be a lucky dog to find a bone. Chances r there that after ur star enters and gives a small ‘enthusiastic’ speech and after that very instance, he might very well reduce to a big zero!

The post-Culturals period is also very significant. You know u haven won. U know ur team did not keep up to the blotch. U know ur money has gone down the drain. U know ur star has lost his value. U know u will not be able to bunk classes at least for an year. U know those days of fighting and breaking up and tearing ur hair apart has no significance now... and u still don know y u r collecting more money to pay up ur choreographers... yes! This is the post-Culturals trauma.

Yet, the team spirit is one thing, which keeps the culturals going. No matter what happens, when ur friends r there to support u, tat s the biggest success of all the slogging you have done. Now, as a would-be final year student, I resolve that I will never collect huge sums and will never involve outsiders and will strive hard to ....... make my dept participate and win. Long live my ambition!