Flyaway Mind

I remember Women's Day mostly when I see the glossy ads in newspapers. But , the memories of a Womens Day during my 3rd year Btech are vividly etched in my mind.It was the time when our bossy seniors were out of the college for project work and suddenly we found ourselves as the shakers & movers of the campus. Many of our crazy ideas materialized during this time.

The idea of celebrating Women's Day in a different way sprouted from our 'qool galz' gang. Soon we had our infectious energy & enthusiasm spread to the whole gals in our college. The idea was to host a fund raising Womens Fest & donate the amount to 'Thanal' , an orphanage near to our college. The fest christened as 'Unarvu' (energy) was dedicated to Kalpana Chawla. That was the time of her demise & so feelings and emotions were running high during those days.

The Fest had all entertaining ingredients - fashion shows, cinematic dances, music, stalls, all hosted by the gals. Alltogether, there were more programs than we ever had during our Arts Fest. So for a change, the guys sat back and enjoyed (meant screaming & cat calls) while we took the reins of the Fest. The most important task was to get moral support from the guys, since for a few of them, the very idea of celebrating Womens Day was like undermining the existence of guys :) So a committee of gals were roped in from each class, to win over the guys, collect funds and make it a success. But I must say, the guys were really sporty about it and helped us amass huge amounts for our fund raising. And they were also supportive to the extend that they threw only tomatoes at us the 'qool gals' when we danced onstage. I remember the tomatoes quite matched with our red colour dance outfit. hehee

It was a feeling of being at the heart of the event, because we took all the responsibilities like booking the auditorium, arrangements for stage, audio systems & event management.

In his welcome speech, one of our popular Sir raved like this, " So I dedicate this Fest in fond remembrance of an Indian woman who made us all proud - Juhi errr.. Kalpana Chawla !!!!" The whole audience burst into laughter and a few even cheered. Grrrrr... I personally think it was deliberately done by him :) And I proudly did the introductory speech on Kalpana Chawla.

We put up various stalls during the Fest for fund raising. As usual the 'dedication counter' was a runaway hit. It's where anybody can pay 10 bucks and have a filmy song dedicated to anybody else. The songs will be played in between the events, along with the dedication message. Then there was 'face painting stall'. It was quite crowded with guys because pretty gals sat there to paint faces. Then there was 'mehndi stall' put up by some creative ones. But the toughest job at hand was for 'secret message counter' , where the unfortunate messengers had to deliver anonymous letters even to the principal.

The event was a success by all means and we were able to hand over a good proportion of money to the orphanage. That was a year when I felt worthy of having celebrated Women's Day.......