06/04/2015

06/04/2015; 01:15:

It’s been a happy week.
So, the evening of 30th saw the prelim rounds of D’Battle’s British Parliamentary Debate. The MUN went on at the same time. We had two debates as part of the prelim- ‘This House believes that divorce and harassment laws should be gender-neutral’ and ‘ This House believes that it would not prosecute battered women for killing their husbands’ We got to be the Oppostion, in both cases. While this was underway, I was also at attempting to successfully do a press release for the event. A couple of phone calls and good pictures later, that was sorted.
At 10 p.m., Pre-Process Number 4 for the SAC-C nominees was to begin. They had earlier sent in proposals, for an event/change/suggestion of their choice. They were now required to prepare a 4-slide PowerPoint presentation about the same, which was to be presented and cross-questioned. Their ideas included a pan-India B-Plan Competition, a whole induction week for the incoming batch, a 3-day intra-IPM event, an IPM-PGP event, a new 4-credit academic course which would deal with a model town as an example to be understood and replicated and a new food-joint on campus.
I had to disappear in the middle, for a short while, for we’d made it to the quarter-finals of D’Battle. Instead of carrying on with listening to the presentations, the other members of the SAC EC decided to get themselves food from the night mess and wait on me instead. So, I didn’t miss anything; fortunately, we at least won that quarter-final- ‘This House believes that developing and developed countries should not be held to the same environmental standards’. The presentations went on till around 2 a.m.
31st saw a few Public Relations classes, through the day. After class, I spent some time with Sir, trying to understand what PR as a career option entails. I have to admit that it does sound very attractive, especially at the moment. At 6:30 p.m., Pre-Process Number 5 for the SAC-C hopefuls was held in NLT-9. It was, as pegged by the hopefuls themselves, a ‘pseudo-batch meet’- all 2013 batch students were invited to be present and throw questions and more at their to-be representatives. Unfortunately, I had to miss this, since the semi-final of D’Battle was to be held at the exact same time. Rastogi Sir and Ms. Bishakha Majumdar were to be the judges for the evening. The MUN was being judged by Dr. Shweta Kushal. When I got to the venue of the semi-final, one other team was already there – another two were yet to arrive. Our clash with this team was thus fixed- or so I thought. My teammate decided that it was a perfect time to begin throwing up. Once he was done, he still felt up to participate and, we did. The topic was rather interesting – ‘This House will, if the technology exists revive people who have committed suicide.’ Our opponents were rather good, even spending time in their closing speech to point out that I had, just as the media does, quoted things out of context right where it was perfect for me! Well, my rebuttal speech did have a lot of ‘The Opposition said & I quote...’ post which I proceeded to state why said comment could be logically invalidated. This victory was soon followed by a final with the preparation time cut short since the judges were short on time. We lost a well-fought debate, where we spoke against ‘The House believes that the value of premier institutions will dilute if these are in every state, making them political constructs’. There was also an informal event held- ShipWreck- where the ship is sinking and you ought to convince the captain of the ship to give you the last life-jacket. Chandra, who did a Sunny Leone and yours truly, who pulled off a Biometric Attendance Machine managed to win that one!
Later in the night, a series of Group Discussions were conducted for the SAC-Coordinator hopefuls- they discussed the role of the SAC-C in the IPM fests, the level of interference that the SAC-C can have in the working of a club/committee, they even did a strength-weakness analysis of each other. This ended only by 2 a.m.
1st April aka Wednesday saw the SAC-T shortlist being declared. From the initial 22 applicants, the number had been narrowed down to 9 after a series of 3-4 pre-processes which included the usual SoP, Résumé, questions about how the SAC can be registered, documents needed during an audit and more. Some kids from IIT-Indore decided that I was the President of IIM-Indore and landed up on campus at around 10:30 a.m. I had class and could only meet them an hour later. IIT-Indore had its annual tech/cultural fest, Fluxus, on the 3rd-4th & 5th of April; these kids were going to spend some time on our campus to encourage participation in their fest and also sell some passes for their pro-nights- the SunBurn on 4th night and the Farhan Akhtar concert on the 5th. I got them hooked up with a table and a couple of chairs; they parked themselves outside the Mess, where they remained until 5 p.m.
A meeting with the new IPM chair, Prof.Ranjeet Nambudri was to be held on the 1st. It got shifted from 12:30, to 1:10 and was finally held at 6:30 p.m. He spent about an hour, hearing out what the SAC EC had to say- we discussed everything from the social internships to the visiting faculty and the necessary PR to let everyone know about our course. Sir seems very positive about all the suggestions and ideas that we have and will have- looking to a positive push-ahead for the course!
At around 7 p.m., the Music Club held auditions in the C-Block common room. There’s an upcoming IIT v/s IIM face-of, which shall be held on 10th & 11th April. This shall include events in the fields of Dance, Drama, Debate, Quizzing, Writing and more!
The Boys’ Basketball team went to play their first match at MediCaps’ Sports fest, MoonStone 2k15! Unfortunately, they lost, 21-19.
2nd April was a holiday, since it was a Thursday. We were all geared up for our Basketball and Volleyball Matches later in the day. We were at the venue by 11 a.m. Our day began with a victory over the Sanghvi Girls’ Basketball team, 19-9. Our Volleyball Boys team then won their first match; however, the lost their next match, the quarter final, later in the day. The Girls’ Volleyball team put up a strong fight but lost to the home team.
Once we were back on campus, by around 4 p.m., there was a Zephyr session to attend. I volunteered and was hypnotized by our campus counsellor who moderates the sessions. Hypnosis is very different from what I’d thought- you’re still conscious, you only shed the inhibitions/control that you wish to shed and it’s actually a nice feeling! The only thing that was perhaps a little off was how long the process felt to me- it was almost 13 minutes long but that felt like just 7, to me!

Some rather spicy maggi later, we were back in the hostel. An industrial visit to Pune which had been in the pipeline for a while finally saw an official announcement. We shall be visiting 5 industries, over 3 days.

3rd morning began in anticipation of the Basketball Final that we had in the afternoon. We were at the venue by mid-day; a boys’ semi-final game was in progress- this one was the match that everyone had been waiting for- both sides were very strong; at the end of 40 minutes, the score was 50-all; the game went into overtime and was only then finally decided! It was a thriller of a game to watch!
Our final was right after; we got off to a good start- the game got pretty close, a couple of times; but, we were having a good day! We beat the home team, 21-16 to emerge victorious! Happy but exhausted, everyone got back to campus. I then managed to sleep for over 16 hours, getting up in the middle to get the World Politics assignment done. There was a Finance Quiz that was held at 7p.m., that evening; we’d meant to participate, but, well. The quiz, of course, was rather well-received.
Chiraag, the IPM e-Magazine sent out its issue- the theme for this time was Spring!

4th April
The highlight of the day was our visit to the mela which is currently up at the ground opposite the Collectorate in Indore city! We were on our way to go watch Fast & Furious 7 which was screened on campus, on Saturday evening, when we thought of the mela. An immediate change of plans resulted; we were soon on the 7 p.m. bus to the city. We sat on the Giant Wheel, Colombus (the boat thing) and Break-Dance; we also managed to get some good food eaten. We were back on campus by 10 p.m., after a very successful visit to the mela.
Later in the night, we held interviews for all the SAC-C hopefuls- this was to be the last thing before the elections.
5th evening was spent interviewing the last 6 SAC-T candidates standing! A rather unanimous decision on the best candidate was reached, unlike the SAC-C process.
Elections shall be held late on Monday evening! Preparations for the IIT v/s IIM Face-Off are in full progress! Trophies are being selected, the Photography Club is planning an exhibition and the Dance Club just added an additional event! Then, there’s the Industrial Visit- we will be leaving on the evening of 13th April. Also, the coordinators and members of the other clubs and committees shall be selected soon!