Writing an account on Chaperons gives me an utter satisfaction, a happyning which will always remain close to my heart.
This blog post is dedicated to all the ACBRites.
It all started during the outset of 2nd semester (end of January, 2011). One fine day, me and Aman (Amanpreet) were caught hold by Kavita ma’am (non-teaching staff member) to organize a fest in March beginning; hearing this we were taken aback, since none of our seniors (in our knowledge) had organized or even mentioned about it. She said that few years ago one of the batch organized a fest and since it was a very private (informal) affair so it was super fun, although me & Aman didn’t understand why it was called fest in that situation but never mind this was something fun.!
ACBR (Ambedkar Centre for Biomedical Research) is supposed to be a hard core academic institute (can be suspected from the name itself!) oriented towards research so cultural activities do not hold much of value. Although, I was very much fascinated with the idea of having a fest, Aman was sceptical. He reasoned that we have our GRE in the near future (mine even more nearer i.e. end of March) and taking up such responsibility would require lot of effort from our side. Next day, I talked to Arushi and Chandrita about whole thing and considering their nature I was pretty much sure that they would be very much interested. And then Aman had no option but to give in to his dear friends coaxing! Following this we told same thing to the whole class and as it always happen there was a split, but after few rounds of talking and convincing majority of population were in the favour of fest. It was also thought out that our seniors and PhD fellows won’t be given responsibility, as they were already overburdened with their projects during that time, so majority of work was supposed to be done by our class. But later it turns out that their voluntary contribution was far more bolstering than us, it actually kindled life force into the Chaperons.
Soon, the preliminary plan was laid and we approached our Director for the required permissions; to our surprise he was very much happy with the initiative and asked us to quickly find a name for the event which is both scientific and can be implied to a cultural event. We came out with few non-scientific (like Lashkara, Dhamak etc) names but he didn’t agree and insisted for a scientific name. Since we were running out of time we picked up a textbook of cell biology and searched few names in its glossary and simultaneously people gave their inputs, list was prepared of some 30-odd names and given to the Director. Finally, after all the scientific brainstorming over a cultural event, one name was finalized - ‘Chaperons’ (proposed by Javed). Next issue was monetary arrangements for the event, when we said this to the Director, he refused to provide monetary support from the institute as this was a student’s event and they are supposed to raise the funds. Considering the fact that we are from science community, we seldom are involved in sponsor-hunting but we were certainly up for the challenge.
Spearheads of creativity.! (clockwise: Lipsa,Astha,Mojahid,Zeeshan)
For any big event team work and organization is required, absorbed with such ideologies we divided the whole class in different teams such as creative, on-off stage event, finance etc and chose heads for them. Of these teams, most important part was supposed to be played by creative team. When I pounced onto the idea of cultural event, it had always been in back of my mind that we have a ‘Super-Creative’ set of people (like Astha, Zeeshan, Mojahid, Lipsa) in our class who can do wonders if given an opportunity; but to back them we required decent amount of funds.
Even to approach the sponsors we needed to have an outlay of event and a venue, for this we required seed money which was raised by collecting minimal amount from the students of ACBR. We had high hopes from few of the potential sponsors but reality check was not so fruitful. And this was just the beginning of the toughest task in the whole process.
Core committee- Tha backbone of Chaperons (Top: L to R-Aman,Mohsin,Javed; Bottom: L to R-Mojahid,Karan,Wasi)
Since the ACBR was not participating financially in the event so a namesake President was supposed to be chosen from the society for the collection of funds. People of my class honoured me with the same but I still liked myself to be considered as “rubber-stamp” as none of my decisions were influenced by personal bias but opinion of class as majority, after all it was there event. Core committee (Aman, Javed, Mohsin, Karan, Wasi & Mojahid) opted not to elect other positions (secretary, vice President etc.) as it would have invited unnecessary bias. Many a times, in a humorous manner though, Javed said that he is Vice President so it was fun to pull his leg; I also started a chain SMS in the class:
"ACBR presents Chaperons 2011"
President (Rubber stamp) - Mrinal
Minister (Wazir) - Wasi
Treasurer (Dhanlakshmi) - Vandana
Right hand of President - Aman
Left hand of President - Mohsin
No control of President - Javed
Chaperons Poster designed by ASG.
The high point in the whole event was the time window in which whole thing was organized; to organize mammoth event like this in a fairly unsuitable condition (academics oriented institute), certainly requires lot of homework and time. In the middle of February, date for the event was finalized to be 4th of March’11 and the venue (Sir Shankar Lal Concert Hall) was booked from the seed money. In no time, Astha came out with a splendiferous poster (few of the events were totally out of our budget but still we mentioned them, hoping some miracle will make them happen).
Lets us all think together..!
Now, the two biggest problems looming over Chaperons was the much awaited first semester result (certainly it would have marred the hopes and high spirits) and sponsorship. With hardly two weeks to go to for ‘Grand Finale’ it seemed impossible to raise our funds from 20k to 100k, which would have given wings to our dream.
To be continued..
Lots of Love,
Mrinal
PS- ACBR people do share your memories in the comments.