To my all....

To auditions,to Parithaana-Bilahari,to Ambils and her alaap,to minks who gave me the result,to intro session, to Apu and his long hair,to the Original maestro Thadari,to Fresher's practice sesison,to Deepa and the thillana,to the pathetic first performance in ET, to an uneventful 1-1, to unknown seniors,to boredom,to the coming of the legends in 1-2,to Apu Loki Nimmy for the exuberence,to Jaggu and PTM,to TAP 'Practice', to Nimmy-the best teacher Raag has ever seen, to Nimmy and her boisterous voice,to Viswa's Sangamam,to the biggest dancer troupe Raag had, to Kalinganardhanam, to 32 times, to Thadar(junior) and NPK,to publicity rounds, to brainstorming, to Aala and her mind-blowing dance and the command,To O kuruvi Chittu Kuruvi,To Gomi and Ilayaraja Songs,to endless painting on charts,to ignorance,To Apu and jaundice,to Aala and her family,to Sangamam '04,to Midways,to Nimmy and Jaggu and the mime for 'chaaya chaaya' on the Bus, to nile nile ambar, to Apu and gen strumming on the Gat,to BITS Library Inaug,To Divs and KD,to the wonderful compositon, to Bharathi and the strings,to Katanakutoohalam,to enthu session in audi, to Loki and vellai pookaL,to Sankar and naatu sarakku,to Rajiv and Porna,to the first farewell,to Viswa and moon walk,to tears,to Rajiv and perfection,to Porna and meticulous mails,to Nivy Thadar and Manojh and the first-ever NR backddrop,to boring guys of my batch,to the collage,to Kutty for all the warmth,to discovering the dancer in Nivy, to nivy and alaipayuthey, to the coming of '04 batch,to Ramya and Ad Cal,to VSP and her innocence, to Kaushik and the silent-hitting,to Nithya and the flawless voice,to the farewell again,to the coming of Apu, Co-ord Sangamam '05,to chaos, to DW auditions, to Vaidehi's cake, to Enthu and Bujju, to occasional pop corns,to enthu session,to innovative backdrop, to thermocole instruments,to Ramana and dance poses,to Nivy painted Sitar,to Apu and KD and the instantaneous folk music, to Apu and rain effect,to Loki and his job at I think DSL, to sheer joy, to running down FD2, to Apu man-handling Loki, to Clutters and Clatters and Loki's wing,to Loki and desperate kadalai,Apu Nivy and F.R.I.E.N.D.S,to Chak and her bizarre ideas,to YB and the crazy enthu!,to Sangamam '05, to the marriage again, to Kaladhara- multilingual concert,to the farewell, to many tears, to many emotions, to the separation, to the wonderful batch of 2000, to the legends, to the names that cannot be forgotten, to two people Raag is indebted to,to Apu and Loki,to teh Psenti concert, to Naadaloludai,to Org Comm '06, to Manojh as joint-sec,to session at Jupup's house,to evolution of Ranjani,to auditions and disappointment, to worry and wrinles on the forehead,to BITSAT batch, to the very few freshers, to the kid AP,to the genius Ganesh, to the silent Swarna, to little known Barath,to a worried me and manojh,to the wonderful '04 batch, to their passion,to Rajiv for the support,the diary and endless maintenance of accounts,to the screw sessions,to Nivy and her strength,to Nrithya Ranjani,to !.!, to the instrumental composition,to Maathey, to Jaggu and the tongue-twsiters,to VSP and Orygamy,to Kutty and DW,to endless chats over gtalk about Raag,to birthday baked cakes, to gifts, to 'feeling wanted', to genuine love,to Kari and two jobs and unwanted scene,to Jaisalmer and camel rides,to sand dunes and tents,to Arjun and boring ghost stories, to Doss and spirit,to Rajiv and itenary mail,to Chak and her phone calls,to farewell,to more tears,to more seperation, to more praise for 2000 batch,to collage photo frame,to Psenti concert,to Rajiv and request-chits,to the coming of Sangamam '06, to meticulous planning by Org Comm '06, to TAP again,to Sahana ;),to a brillaint Inaug idea, to tiring composition sesison, to Sriram Ganesh VSP Ramya Ro, to Nivy and her brainwaves, to Ganesh- an absolute genius, to Chakravaaham,to Kaushik and the hunter-sequence,to all the pressure, to screwed up acads,to long nights,to Sangamam '06, to the awakening to this wonderful dream,to Ranjani - a beautiful dream,to Nandy and 'LONDON',to Radha and Sankarabharanam,to Roh and her wonderful voice, to 3 day TAP,to the 'Final Ranjani', to tears,to the end of '03 batch's togetherness, to the Psenti concert,to Manojh and Sankar,to Dehradoon and river rafting,to Sankar taking over Kari with the humor,to Org Comm'07,to Sankar and Nivy,to the farewell, more tears,to the ending of the year, to the easened shoulders,to feeling light, to feeling proud, to feeling satisfied, to Sriram and VSP,to the hols, to spons hunt, to meeting at Nivy's house, to Sankar and artiste booking,to Nivy and unbelievable planning,to Samisana and the eventful summer ;),to t shirts and kamal ji, to coming of 4-1,to Sriram and punctuality, to VSP and endurance, to Auditions, to more gloom, to sullen faces, to Hindustani music! , to Shravan Hardik Prateek Vamsi and Roopa!, to wonderful juniors,to brillaint t shirt sales,to NrithyaRanjani, to Tharangam,to Manojh and psentisem,to Khetri,to archana and trekking enthu,to psenti concert, to Shyamala and singing,to farewell, to sullen faces, to coming of 4-2, to the hope of Sangamam '07, to the fear, to the tension, to TAP, to G and TAP sessions, to brilliant turnout for TAP,to BP and Nivy for choreo, to Radha and Aaye Giridhar,to Sankar and the vritham,to Arjun and CG: 10,to Jupup and Juptronics, to Subha and erumai,to Sangamam '07,to Manojh and his mere presence,to Nive and the tickets, to Ramana and unmaterialised VT, yo Shyamu and phone calls ,to all the planning and chartwork, to colorful printed posters, to huge turn out,to see the dream come true,to gratitude, to happiness, to sentiments,to 'brown' saree,to enthu sessions, to Samisana and kozha adi,to Simla, to Rishi and pattikaadu, to endless hogging,to mega shopping,to Shravan and Sangeetha, to Hardik and the bike,to Manojh and the enthusiasm, to Sankar and his craziness, to Arjun and 'kalapaasu',to VSP and assignment,to all the humor fun wit love affection care sarcasm temper fights ,to SAC cafe meet ups,to temple lawns lachcha,to farwell, to not wnating to be there,to good food,to brilliant gifts, to bitching sessions,to orygamy and flowers,to beautiful juniors, to raag-the family,to AP and Swarna, to psenti speeches, to hardly any psenti,to the end of it all,to Manojh and the support, to Shyamu and the love, to Nive and the child in her, to Ramana and her sanity,to Doss and the silence, to Rao and the talent,to Subha and her innocence, to Samisena and her audacity,to Arjun and the humor, to thadar and the insanity,to to be kicked out with a farwell,to the feeling yet to sink in, to Raag that has seen me all, to Raag that has seen my fallacies, to Raag where I lived every moment, to all the love and affection,to Raag- the happy family,to Raag for Nivy and Jupup.

Signing Off
Soumithra Ramesh
My id no is 2003B3A6649
I play the Veena in the Club
I've been learning from blah blah ... :D

The Pink and white flower

A flower of beauty it was
uncalled(for), t'was for your 'dieu;
beauty bestowed by its god
on'e who we call vespers
the nectar was in it too;
a cocktail of love of the pink
the spirits of Rag's treasures
so much so, for much essence
call it a new breed of rose not untrue.

Farewell..

Raag's Treasure!

The PsentiSemites!

The cutest flowers ever!

:)

Sec - Jt Sec!

;)

Thank You!

This blog goes out on behalf of all of us psenti semites who've had the BEST times of our bitsian lives by literally livng in the club 24 * 7. I know all of us have been thru this sentence many million times today in a span of five hours neverthe less, I still feel like mentioning it one last time, amidst a larger group.... more so a group thats been thru this in the previous years around the same time of the semester.

Raag's been the place where we've grown into what we are today, and many of the lessons that we've learnt from the people we met and interacted with at raag, n raag itself thru its activities and discussions have been lessons that we will cheerish the most and will carry with us as distinct memories for many years to come.

As a batch, we feel proud, at this moment for 2 things.

One to have seen the transition from what it was in our first year to what it is now. Needless to say that the 2000 batch , 2001 batches got special mention like every other farewell this time too. Likewise, we know deep down inside that in many farewells to come there will be the open secret of 'soumi-manojh sec jt sec ship' in all representing 2003 batch that initiated a change.

Second, to leave behind raag with the best members the club has ever had. deserving n dedicated. Yo 2004! :)

It was an absolutely wonderful farewell. The write ups had a personal connection. All of em. We were smiling, rejoicing, and enjoying every happy moment. The fact that there was Hardly any psenti today was perhaps cos the farewell was to early in the season. But we bet, this has been the best we've seen in our four years here. The cutest of gifts. The happiest of memories. The latter in itself makes farewell a happy occasion :)

Thank you all so much.
We love you.
3 cheers to another great year of sec jt sec ship!
3 cheers to 2000, 2001 batches
3 cheers to "yo 2004"
3 cheers to the invite makers
3 cheers to my dear batchmates
3 cheers to AP n Swarna, n loads of luck too.
3 cheers to ORG COMM 08. we ll make sure we are off campus co ordinators ourselves!

Rag-!

“Here’s to you guys”

“There are certain things that can be defined, but certain things needn’t be”. Well, don’t even try to extrapolate to find out as to what could be the possible ‘relevance’ to the post that follows. It’s just a flash of thought. :)

Read on…

I’ve always believed in the power of the pen coz it kinda brings out what exactly is running on my head. Well, I’ve had a quite a long, inevitably ‘sunny’ Sunday. A concert in the morning ( ‘Swaralaya’ – Raag’s ode to ‘varnams’), some ‘blah’ presentation that kept getting rescheduled and goddd finally its DONE.!!! Here I am sitting on my bed, penning down my thoughts…pretty obviously the ‘best’ part of the day. :)

I’m not quite going to delve into vivid technical details about the concert. A very typical ‘Raag’ show – studded with not many audiences (lets jus call them the ‘lucky few’! – includes the diro – Dr.LKM tho’), our ‘usual’ hiccups with ppl forgetting to get the Sruthi box, our ‘usual’ high points in the show with the choice of Raagams, the ‘usual’ bloopers too, the ‘usual’ SEC-talk, the ‘usual’ snap sessions and the ‘usual’ lunching a Cnot after that. Indeed, I might as well describe the concert quickly. We had a rich blend of all kinds of varnams – Adi thaalam, Ada thaaalam, Pada Varnams n all that – favorite would be ‘ Reethigowlai’ though (yeah yeah yeah…am ‘group-obsessed’ – pretty obviously my ‘group’ sang that song!). Yeah, let me add more to the list – Charukesi, Valachi and Sahana too. :) The concluding piece of the concert was a Hindustani Song sung by a ‘first-yearite’ (Prateek) in the club. To sum it up, ‘twas the only ‘good’ part of my day. :)

All said and done then there is this sudden realization that dawned on me and trust me it almost shook me. Ah! All those ‘usual’ things that I just wrote about aint going to be all the ‘usual’ and ‘same’ anymore. These are probably certain times when you desperately ‘wish’ for ‘change to NOT be the constant thing in life’!It suddenly occurred to me that ‘twas indeed the ‘last’ concert of this eventful semester. Such ‘final’ /’last’ things make me retrospect, analyze and think about the past and carries a lot of meaning to me. It brings with it memories of the past and promises of the years to come.

First things first, I’d like to raise a ‘toast’ (virtually-ob!) to the ‘SEC’ and ‘JOINT SEC’. This is not some ‘feel-good’ gesture, but I really mean it. Well, we’ve had our own share of ‘lean phases’ this year, but then the very fact that we’ve come out of it flourishing only goes to show their potential, dedication, sincerity and passion.

Sriram- he’s just been there be it what!! That would just about sum up everything. His wise-cracks, musical brilliance, impatience, temper, joy, anguish- we’ve just seen it all in ‘Rag’. The man has jus put in his ‘200%’ for the club. Rock on ‘SEC’!!!

ViSPP – Godd, she’s been quite a ‘pendulum’ with ‘n-degrees of freedom’, swindling between a million things to do. This ‘adorable’ being has been what she’s always been in the club – an embodiment of sincerity, amazingly level-headed and perfectly keeping up with the SEC. Nothing quite happens without an approving nod from her. :)

We love you guys (yeah, we MEAN IT!)!!

Here’s to you guys.

Secondly, the fact that the ’03 batch’ falls into the genre of ‘senti-semites’ aint any encouraging. Common, we’ve been pampered, nurtured and motivated by them. Atleast, the previous sem, we always had this sem to look up to a lot more of known faces who were getting back to campus. Damn!! All this makes me feel so bloody OLD!! We’ve always adored you guys, we still learn a lot of things from your batch. ROCK ON!!!

Here’s to your batch!!!

All said and done, it also strikes me that, almost half my batch isn’t going to be ON next sem and that’s what I’d call ‘unfair’!! We’re so used to being and doing things in the club having each other around that it is just about ‘hard’ to imagine things the next sem. I can’t claim to ‘know’ every one of them, but then, most certainly we’ve only had great times making music together.

Here’s to everyone in my batch!

Well, I do realize, I’ve been emotional, sentimental and retrospective, things that I’m usually not at least in an open forum, in this post, but then what the heck! But then again, we’ve got to pull our feet and keep moving and wait for the road to see people walking together, making music and rejoicing it. Yet, things wouldn’t be the same and that would have to be the hard truth!

Here’s to all you guys!

Here’s to music!

TRIP !!

People, in the first place, sorry for a very late update. Here it goes:

14 of us, highly enthued about the trip to Shimla and Kulu-manali; out of which 8 of them formed the orgcom07! That was indeed nice to have manojh too :) We had too sumos - 7+7!

23rd night: Phew! It flew over with people cracking jokes throughout the entire journey and of course few "enthued" people shuttling between the 2 cars to keep everyone alive.

The 24th: We reached shimla around 10 in the morning and after refreshing ourselves, we went down the hill to reach the northern railways canteen and had a sumptuous breakfast. Once done, we got back to our cars and drove to this place called Kufri - Famous for mule rides to reach the snow. But yeah, as majority of us were slihgtly psyched by the maintanance, we had climb up the hill. Went into the Shimla National Park and had awsome fun. Few of us went to down a narrow streaky pathway and compassed the snowy places - where in this video called "pudhu vellai mazhai" from roja was shot, with screening artists Soumi and Sankar (Pattikadu and Rishi). And we found out this new technique of singing specific ragas to specific animals and hence bring them out of their cages, courtesy Sankar. The park fun got over with a small chat lunch in the nearby redi. We got back to our rooms and quickly left to "THE MALL ROAD". As the name says it is famous for shopping. It is on the top of a hill and we had to reach it with the help of elevators. Had funky "saravana bavan" oriented southindian food in "Nalini" restaurant ;) Did few shopping here and there and started walking (again) to the hotel as the elevators were closed half past 10. After taking a while's rest we ran million miles (an exaggeration thouhg) to reach manali the next morning.

The 25th: Booked rooms in the hotel and yay! yay! the snowy day! On our way to Solang valley we haulted to wear on our jackets, gloves and shoes. And now - THE snow! Traced the path to find that sexy place. We spent almost the entire day there. Almost enervated, we reached our cars by mules! Then yeah, the dinner time - Madras cafe :D after which ppl did shopping and everyone well settled in one room to play "customs"!!!

The 26th: After breakfast we left to this temple called "Hadimba". A cute temple; looked like it was submerged in snow. After some gaala time here and there, we went to a Budhist Monastry. Meanwhile, few of us went boating too.By then, the time was well set for lunch. Of course! Madras cafe again :D All packed up our bags and bid a big adieu to manali. One car had to leave Manojh and hence went to delhi. The other one, with atmost difficulty, numerous punctures, somehow reached pilani safe the next day. There ends this short sweet trip.

Memories will stay green forever.