A motley crowd hung around in front of the stage set up in the quad, head-banging as a rock band performed. Another small group of harried looking people hung around near the side entrance of the college, cell phones in hand; these were definitely some of the organizers. A scattered crowd hung around, putting up posters or just laughing and talking, listening to the music being churned out, guiltily thinking they were wasting their time, but knowing full well that this was what made up college spirit. The morning half of each of the three Outlawed days looked and felt very similar to each other, except the Battle of the Bands that happened throughout Day 2.
The three days saw hardly a dull moment. The ambience was set by the fantastic lighting and giant posters put up on the acad block walls at the second college entrance. Blaring death metal made many a Noojie relaxing in the hostels want to kill the performers on stage. One of those times you felt you really couldn’t blame them for staying inside their rooms.
But it was in the evenings that the excitement levels really rose up. The first night saw Bandish performing in the NUJS campus.
A series of unfortunate events prevented Black Lips from turning up for the third and final night of Outlawed. They were sadly arrested for their (er… somewhat… er... lewd) stage antics at a stage show in Chennai, following which they went underground. Some were disappointed that they couldn’t hear the band, some because the arrest did not happen in college. Others who’d been having their doubts about calling the band, given their reputation, heaved a relieved sigh. It also, of course, meant that the SJA was no longer drastically short of funds. The flow of sponsor-money had been more like a trickle.
The gap in the plan meant that the self-styled college band (in spite of Vishnu’s insistence on it not being the college band, but a band made of people who “happen(ed) to be in the same college”, the GB’s spirit of solidarity is such that we just can’t think of it but as the College Band), Unlawful Assembly, would now open for Indigo Children (formerly Superfuzz). It was also U/A’s debut performance, with a fairly scary Joker in the form of Manu Chaturvedi creating sporadic diversions in the audience. The night also saw former Decibel member, Siddhartha Sinha coax his famous strain of Naagin from his guitar.
One of the other highlights of the three day fest was the Amazing Race organized commendably by the LCAS. The inter-college participation only made the event more fun as confusion reigned across the college grounds.
Some other events that saw sizeable participation though less hype were Face Painting, Twister (which made us wonder if Esha Shekhar had bones or was she just rubber), Musical Chairs (in which Vivek Menon came second to a NALSAR guy, but more importantly, managed not to break a single bone!), the Newspaper Dance (won by the team of future MagCom members Vaneesha and Shan after a very tough competition), Tug of War, Arm-wrestling… the list could go on!
Among other things, the Pictionary saw very enthusiastic participation. A high point of the game was when “Forrest Gump” was wrongly guessed as “Run Forrest Gump” due to some miscommunication between the team members which left the remaining participants and audience with tears of laughter. The Eastern Singing competition saw some bathroom singers test their vocal chords on stage. Some performances, like Kinshuk Jhunjhunwala’s, were hailed by all to be excellent. Some others were an affliction for the eardrums.
The cultural events, like the dance performance by a mostly first year team led by third years Abhisaar and Mikey, stole everybody’s hearts as well as the show.
What interested the volunteers and participants more was the free and almost unlimited supply of Mentos mints as they slogged it out at the mad rush of the registration desks. There did seem to be too much to do and very few volunteers, the number of whom surprisingly increased when the time came for purchasing Outlawed T-Shirts at subsidized rates.
All in all, the event was a huge success. Kudos to the SJA for executing the fest so well. We do seem to be improving with each successive year.
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