NR 2010 - 4th October

Let's do something different! That was the line that kept repeating in my head since the summer holidays. Bucketful of whacky ideas mailed (we even considered a classical nagin dance! :P), gigs of videos watched, hours of pondering and discussing and finally we decided on a contemporary main piece for NR. The theme for the piece was chosen as "Navarasa". A pretty tried and tested theme, we knew there was ample of scope for every artist. The challenge was to make it contemporary. And this challenge just got a tad tougher with the entry of 11 new members into the club skilled in arts as diverse as the organisms inhabiting this planet. We got two flautists, a sitarist, a tablist, a pot-ist, a mridangist, three vocalists (sorry five, one guy, one girl and second girl=3 guys :P), an odissi dancer and a bharatanatyam dancer. Enthusiasm and excitement in the club simply bloated up like a huge balloon (Shravan already had chosen his sem-partner!).

We embarked on the two month journey to NR - dancers started choreographing the dance and the musicians started composing music for the various emotions. Four different dance styles - the refined Bharata Natyam, the graceful Kathak, the elegant Odissi and the vibrant Kuchipudi... And to incorporate them all into one piece, maintaining the overall coordination and synchronization was an exhilarating challenge. Hark, we were excited about it! Focus was on simple uniform steps to achieve an overall rhythm, rather than putting in complicated steps and expression.

Hectic acads schedules began to take their toll on us. Psenti-semites worrying about jobs, and EEE-ites worrying about CDCs (rest all didn't give much of a damn tho ;P). Doubts arose on feasibility of such a massive piece. Musicians were already on their way to finishing music composition for the navarasa, it would not have been fair to guss their efforts like that. And there was no back up plan. We had to stick to Navarasa. Slowly but steadily we choreographed rasa after rasa. The enthu returned when it all began to take shape. New costumes were designed.

Last few days saw a flurry of mails sent of daily TODOs (reminded of Dipak's ASAPs), feverish practices, finalizing compering scripts, planning lights and teaching them to freshers. The run-throughs were a mix of work and fun, acads all forgotten. Wish, it was possible to forget them altogether and have every practice in audi only :P

Finally curtains were raised on 4th October to present NR 2k10 to a fairly decent size of audience. The margam for the evening was as follows:

1. Bho Shambho
Dancer: Aastha, Sushmitha
Musicians: Riddhi, Yudhajeet, Ajay, Hari
A dance depicting Lord Shiva's energetic Ananda Tandav as His devotee Nandi looks stunned and dances in His praise as well. The dance was full of picturesque poses, strong steps set to bold mridangam with a beautiful rendition by the singers.

2. Kuchipudi
Dancer: Manjeera
Musicians: Preethi, Neeraja, Shravan, Ajay, Hari
The piece started with graceful Kuchipudi steps praising Lord Krishna and culminated in a fantastic plate dance which had the audience clapping and cheering like mad. The rendition of the song reminded of typical temple mornings with chanting of prayers and ringing of bells.

3. Odissi
Dancer: Kuheli
Musicians: Yudhajeet, Anubha, Sagar, Ajay
The best thing about the piece was that the team composed of all first yearites except Ajay, the mentor. While Kuheli was the perfect epitome of Odissi grace and vigour, the musicians made the piece a perfect present to the audience with their varied swaras and beats.

4. Enna thavam
Dancer: Namrata Raman
Musicians: Preethi, Ajay, Shravan, Hari
Nammu was in her best mommy role and devotee role in the piece. The devotee asks Yashoda, what good deeds have you done so as to have the Lord Himself call you His mother. The sanchari on Krishna's makhan chori was the most lovable part of the piece.

5. Thillana
Dancer: Aishwarya, Aastha, Manjeera, Namrata Raman
Musicians: Preethi, Ajay, Shravan, Hari
As usual, the fast and fun piece of the concert is the thillana. This time's thillana just became too memorable as the audience got into the habit of treating us with applauses for every formations made on stage :P

6. Kathak
Dancer: Namrata Jain
Musicians: Riddhi, Yudhajeet, Anurup Mitra sir (yeah profs also want to play with us now!)
The graceful twists and turns, the subtle expressions, the deft movements of the hands and fingers, the feet never missing a beat and the 28 chakkars.. With the soft music and perfect tabla rendition by sir the piece ended successfully the portrayal of all dance styles individually.

7. Navarasa
Dancer: everyone
Musician: everyone
As mentioned before, the piece brought together all the dance styles and music styles together on the stage. The painful Karunya, the wondrous Adbuta, the beauty and love of Shringara, the fearsome Bhayanak, the disgusting Bibhatsa, the mirthful Hasya, the angerful Krodha, the valorous Veer and the peaceful Shanta. Use of different coloured lights and coloured dupattas for some of the rasas helped to emphasize their meanings. Bhayanak rasa and Adbhuta turned out to be audience favourites :)

All in all, the concert was a grand success. The contemporary style and the novel dresses were greatly welcomed by the audience. After the usual post concert crazy clicking mania, we went laughing and singing to sac. Pratik came down to attend the concert and it was great to have him that day. Kudos to Ajay for his innovative music compositions and musicians for rendering it all so well, and to dancers for their beautiful choreography. Kudos to juniors for their king-sized enthu, to the core batch for all their planning and organizing, to the psenti-semites for their last one performance, to the club.. for sticking together and making it happen... I was just smiling, for my psenti concert in Raag had just come to an end. My best one in the four years, and most memorable one too. Acknowledgments were being discussed, but those funds are for another time....

Aastha.

Farewell Again - 26th April 2010 !

Pratik, Chandu, Shravan

Farewell... one of the dreadest stuff for a psentisemite and also one of the obvious after you enter your college.. so it be.. Welcome to the highlights coverage of Raag Farewell - Monday, 26th April 2010.

Earlier going to the flash back some 4 years back, we had 15-20 people taking farewells in 2 semesters and sadly the total strength of club is around 20 people now.. and these reducing numbers have also affected the number of people taking farewells each semester and this time it was 3 Ragamalikan's - Shravan S, Chandrasekar Srinivasan and Pratik Maheshwari.

Farewell started off with a mime in SAC Room No. 8 - Raag Room with juniors mimicing these three seniors using all the possible funds of 4 years which they had witnessed or heard. Be it Shravan's mridangam enthu, Chandu's Bhaiya crash or Pratik's Saroja. It was entertaining and fun. Hats off to all the juniors with special thanks to Ajay and Riddhi for their acting. :)

After this we were back to our trademark place of farewell, Vijay's @ C'not.

Proceedings started soon with writeups of 3 psentis.

First was the enthu boy - Shravan. People had lot to say about him. This guy has done almost all possible irrelevant and useless stuffs while here @ BITS besides being a cracker at acads and extra-curriculars (swimming, violin, boozing :D, etc). His writeup talked about his crushes, his enthu, his fooding habits, his acads, his violin and him ! Ajay read his writeup and surely Shravan hid his face at times in between claiming to have not done something worth mentioning (pun intended). People will surely miss his all time enthu for any damn thing and also his first year mischiefs and misdeeds :D. His secretariship has been well aclaimed by all who have seen him in his 3rd year and his helping hand even in his 4th year would be surely a point worth an applause. The ability to catch up with both light and classical music with such an ease has been one of his true strengths throughout and this we hope would continue even after this.

After all the masalas and papads and other stuffs he had his part of speaking up and Shravan mentioned all the points which he felt would be crucial to Raag in coming years. Although Shravan is coming back next sem, he took his farewell with his batchmates. Highlights of his speak up was bonding between the club members. He surely has worked a lot on this and we hope to see the same enthu and bonding to carry on in Raag.

Here's to Shravan - The Violinist ! :)

Second in the queue was - Pratik (Its diificult to blog about myself but i'll stick to the writeup for this without adding spices to it :D). Pratik along with Hardik was the first group in Raag to kick off the hindustani proceedings in Raag and he was commended for able to building the platform for the coming talent in Raag on hindustani side. Few points worth mentioning about his writeup was his innovation and stress on publicity. Writeup also talked about his love for Hindi and HPC related work. Blogging which has been his passion was also appreciated.

He also got his time to speak up and he stressed mostly on innovating even with lesser strength and try to increase the numbers both in the club and our audience.

Here's to Me - A Ragamalikan ! :)

And the grand finale ended at - Chandu. Chandu entered the club in his 2-1 and since then had been an integral part of the club and all its events and enthus. His imagination and poster & backdrop work for NR and Sangamam was a point not to be missed out for sure. One important point mentioned was about his rise from his 2-1 to 4-2 with his mridangam skills. His dedication to learning despite a very tight schedule (Chandu was involved in a hell lot of things at a time throughout his BITSian life..applause :) ) was really appreciable. Chandu was the 3rd person whom I saw was given the award of - "Time Management God" which he displayed wonderfully in his BITSian life. Not to forget, his different style of saying - "YES MAAAAN" is still tinkling on everyone's lips :D.

Chandu when spoke, spoke about the overall development of club through personal inputs of using skills to the max.

Here's to Chandu - The Maaaan ! :D

Apart from the club writeups we also had 2 other writeups. First one was from our beloved AP who wrote all wonderful stuffs about all the psentisemites and made them feel proud. A sincere thanks to AP for sparing his valuable time (but of what i've heard.. he's vella as of now :D ) and penning down few lines for each of the psentisemites. Your words will has always and will always be important to all of us as you have been a constant source of inspiration. Thanks :)

Then came a writeup from a yaar of all the psentis - Mr. Vamsi who has taken his farewell the previous sem. Of what I remember, after his farewell he told me that he would not spare any of us (batchmates) and take out the revenge in our writeup. But I am happy to say that nothing as such happened and the words which Vamsi's pen uttered were a bunch of delicate flowers for his lovely batchmates with whom he has spent 4 wonderful years. A huge applause for you too for writing for us and remembering. :)

After this it was the usual snap session which wasn't as long as it used to be with all those funds of A1, B1, A3, A7, etc, etc. But all the psentis really had a wonderful time and are really thankful to all you wonderful juniors who gave us a super farewell right from the invitations.

Now what we carry with us are sweet memories captured in those songs, those instruments, those dances, that raag room, that SAC, that 2219, that 2220, that Audi, that T-Lawns, that ANC, that Cnot, that Khetri, those trips, those endless pics, those funny videos, those useless funds, those innovative compositions, those group dances and those teary farewells.

One common thread which kept us bound was music and it'll ever be this. No matter where we are, will be. But we'll always be close - Thanks to Music, a gift conferred upon us by Him.

Just to say at last:

Here's to Raag - The Club !

(I guess that this is going to be my psenti-post on this blog. I hope you enjoyed my version of blogging and other will surely come down to keep us updated about Raag forever)

SHAAM-E-GHAZAL 2010

Here comes a post which most of you would relate to as you have passed through that phase of psenti sem and your psenti concert.
SHAAM-E-GHAZAL was started 2 years back in 2008 to bring light classical music to light and it instantly attracted BITSians and profs alike. Ghazals have always been choice of many and tapping this interest of common junta Ragamalika gave it a shot and its good to see that the interest still remains intact in its 3.0 version.

SHAAM-E-GHAZAL 2010 was also the psenti concert for Pratik (and almost for Shravan :D) and it was organized on 20th April 2010 in LTC QT. We have changed the venue for our concerts and made them open theatre (I remember that we organized a freshers concert in Amphi @SAC). We also had an instrumental concert organized on 17th April 2010, details about which would be put up soon.

Ghazals and open theatre with calm weather made a perfect combo and we hope to keep this tradition as far as possible.
Proceedings started between 8-8:15PM and went on till about 9:45PM. Audience came in pouring and touched around 60-70 in number which was quite encouraging. Profs included NVM, AK Sarkar, Anil Rai, Srijata Dey, Sangeeta Sharma and others.
This time we also had a female singer included to extend the performers group to 4. I'll list all the songs in the order performed and also highlight the songs most appreciated by junta.

A good and bad point during the concert was power-cut during the concert and that too twice. Good thing after power-cut was that enthusiastic audience came forward and the atmosphere for both the performers and the audience was enhanced and it felt good to see audience's love for ghazals and darkness with moon and starlit sky was an awesome feeling. Bad thing that 2 songs couldn't be recorded properly and I'm afraid that they therefore can't be uploaded for you to listen.
Else wise concert had the audience glued till the end and thus ended this semester's psenti concert on a very high note with wishes coming from all the people in audience.

The list of songs in order of performance is:
1.) Tera Chehra Kitna Suhana Lagta Hai (Jagjit Singh)
2.) Teri Aankhon Ko (Mehdi Hassan)
3.) Deewaron Se Milkar Rona (Pankaj Udhas)
4.) Ye Dil Ye Pagal - Awaargi (Ghulam Ali)
5.) Ranjish Hi Sahi (Mehdi Hassan)
6.) Aur Aahista Kijiye Baatein (Pankaj Udhas)
7.) Zara Aahista Chal (Pankaj Udhas)
8.) Chupke Chupke Raat Din (Ghulam Ali)
9.) Kal Chaudhvin Ki Raat Thi (Jagjit Singh)
10.) Chitthi Na Koi Sandes (Jagjit Singh)
11.)* Dayar-e-Dil Ki Raat Mein (Asha Bhonsle, Ghulam Ali)
12.)** Tumko Dekha To Ye Khayal Aaya (Chitra, Jagjit Singh)
13.) Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa (Ghulam Ali)
14.)* Hosh Waalon Ko Khabar Kya (Jagjit Singh)
15.) Hothon Se Chhoo Lo Tum (Jagjit Singh)
16.) Tum Itna Jo Muskura Rahe Ho (Jagjit Singh)
17.) Rafta Rafta Wo Mere (Mehdi Hassan)

* = Duet
** = Female solo
No * = Male Solo

Performers:
Male Vocal & Harmonium = Pratik Maheshwari
Female Vocal = Uthra B
Violinist = Shravan S
Percussionist (Tabla) = Riddhidev Banerjee

Thats it from our side for a while. Will update with other happenings of Ragamalika this sem soon. Till then Adios !

p.s. - To listen to the songs, click on them.