Its "Love_Actually"

Okay … Its time to document a bit about my subsequent winning acting venture “Love Actually” – A performance packed melodrama.

Vipanchika ‘05 had an extra pressure on IT’ans as it was a Hat Trick prospect with taking hold of the champions’ Trophy indeed for our “English Skit” as well. Hence, we started with certain eye-catching titles but the mere remembrance of the last upshot was keeping every subject look incompetent enough to get us the Best Skit award when other silent branches like EC/Civil were on fire this time. It was until “Babil” – My classmate entered the confused scene and like his fizzy character proposed us to go for some enormously uncomplicated topics, I was inarguably persuaded as I was coordinating two more skits, a Hindi and English respectively. Thus, I was expected to be stretched out by all the three teams with dates getting closer.

Not receiving much of the contradiction from other ends we arrived onto a unanimous decision of showing some after wrecking-effects of “campus love”. And my most competent team geared up all through once again for the development of the script, locating best of their grey cells for most innovative ideas, within 2 days we were up with a rough draft. Practice started but unlike “US Placement Blues” which banked most on its storyline, this skit required lot of emotions and expressions, perhaps an action amassed consequence.

Getting inspired with my navy styled hair cut the role that suited me most was of the Retd. Military Father of the girl (who falls in love), catches his daughter red handed indulged in a romantic conversation while on phone. Contrary to my normal behavior (be assured of off praises) I had to scream throughout the scene & on the same hand clarity of voice was another factor which troubled me the most. After even about a day of practice exact emotions and dialogues weren’t able to find their flow. One moment it felt as if it was kind of an impossible role but hard practice & not considering me less than any most successful actor in the tinsel town I finally eased up with my character configuration, could find the relative voice and indeed the people who saw me for the first time were not less than surprised. Ah! Sigh of relief, what to say for long it felt on par acting in a film.

It was already dark on 26^th of Feb but this year Open air Auditorium welcomed us, with a third slot again … a superstitious corner of mind had already given us the best performance award. Crowd was ready to boo every stage performance irrespective of branch but once IT is on stage, all attempts to deviate the attention of the performers and observers are assured, when already IT has a lead of 20 points with Civil firmly following behind.

Whoosh! And raised up the curtains, Lainu (The Lead Character) had already started firing the saboteurs with his performance; [Now you need a great heart to miss that remarkable action happening on stage] we all behind the curtains were no doubt craving to see that performance as the crowd boosted most of scenes with the applauses. Improved coordination & last emphatic win certainly endowed us with the strong mental confidence. All banners were carried on time without any confusion, the biggest catch of the skit was the loud voice that everybody had maintained throughout; and this single factor with its absence is capable enough to diminish the whole team effort in a single go.

My Scene loomed, with bold heart I entered the stage with chest popping out (to bring in the so called “Military Personnel effect”), depicting suspicion in mind & on face. Indeed put all the voice that was remaining in me after some final practice sessions. Hold on! What is this? Mahima seemed to be really terrified, oh! My God her face expressions indeed made me feel real personnel on fire for a moment.

Not much bothered by the audience I continued firing her on stage but buddy “this is me”, how can I perform everything perfect without any confusion! Now I forgot a dialogue for a moment but again “this is me”, who managed to cut that part off and found a flow with the next very dialog and expressions. Perhaps that very moment gave me most of the satisfaction in this skit, coz challenge no doubt lies in such problematic situations - Lot of lessons in jus’ a single moment !

Can’t forget the incredible appreciation I received from KK (Krishna Kumar) – My Classmate, he was so impressed with my performance that he almost laid a kiss on my cheek. God how proud embarrassment that was! Its not that nobody else appreciated or nobody else than me got these praising, in fact I was nowhere in front of Lainu, Mahima, Kirtan & others, I mentioned it intentionally for the simple fact that KK encapsulates in himself a wonderful actor & a character. It’s undoubtedly a surprise when such great performers appreciate you, acting as the source of motivation for further proceedings.

After about an hour, results were announced, already dazzled by our combined colorful performances, judges had no other option left than to grade rest of the skits below ours. Our electrifying response mixed with merriment caught the due attention of the masses. A sudden surprise followed me when one of my classmates asked me for the script of the skit as his friends from MEC (Model Engineering College) been impressed seeing this performance & quite out of the box storyline, resembling with most unspoken real stories that they planned to perform the same skit in their campus scheduled to be after about a week.

This enjoyment din’t just stop here, being adjudged as the top performing team, we paved our way to the Sargam ’05 – University Arts Festival @CUSAT campus which started right after a single day break when Vipanchika got over and we found our slot due for 3^rd March again. Wasting a day with an intention to improve some weak frames in the skit we finally realized that the fun and humor was trying to keep a distance from all of us, thus, with no obligation again we landed up with the exact performance as it was prior but undoubtedly one good team outperformed our performance taking the lead to force us to settle down with the second best award. The relishing thing was that the judges openly described skit interpretations and they could derive lot more significance and meanings out of our skit than what we could have derived, had if we tried lot hard and also the margin with which we remained second was just minute, thus, enjoyed that second win and embossed lots of memories of those times, which will remain somewhere forever in the hearts for all the years to come.

US Placement Blues

Here goes a brief memorial description about a wonderful skit that I was an integrated part of during VIPANCHIKA ’04 – An inter branch Arts festival at CUSAT campus.

It was about 12 hours delay with the skits presentation on stage when the show began at around 12:00 midnight; I personally found the then ambiance much better than had the skits been presented all through noon. Thanks to CUBSA members for that delay although it did cause us heaps of trouble. And I can’t forget the pressure piling on to our heads by the evening with our non-stop practice which gave exhaustion a room to play with our physical limits.

It was around 10 p.m. when we daringly raised ourselves to the Open Auditorium-Main Stage but now it was the turn of God’s own country to mess up with our daring spirits, and the heavy rain followed us to cover the whole stage before we could actually make any arrangements for ourselves. Hmmm. We really had nothing but to keep patience for the right time to come for ourselves.

With the third slot for our chest number, there again came a moment when the whole arrangements were been shifted to the SMS Auditorium – tightly packed with about 400 students not letting even the fresh air to find a room to enter. Whole of my team decided to wait outside & avoid seeing any prior performances coz that could actually hamper the individual performances, since every great artist in my team was on a debut to this great world of acting. But still with the news “flowing in” through the IT organizers, revealed that the prior performances weren’t on par even with our practice which they had already seen.

Soon we were behind the curtains making arrangements within those 300 seconds that were allotted to every skit with a bit of partiality to the first team. I still remember those energies emanating from within with the excitement of curtain which rose up to let everybody ooze out their energies in every possible manner they knew. Females in our skit were indeed sensational with their outfits, which did serve towards the craving spirits of the crowd. It was amazing to see the crowds calming down right from the third scene and really concentrating on the dialogues, I couldn’t believe at least form the drunken community to be such patient.

One thing that I can’t truly forget is the confusion I created behind stage about a scene which I’d already performed and forgetting completely as to whether I really performed it on stage or during the practice.

(Me & Sethu - A scene depicting Indian secretary interacting with her Boss)

There indeed were a lot of acknowledgements, praising and morale boosting talks which had made certainly our minds for not settling up on to anywhere less than the first prize. Anyway, with lots of hopes we stood outside the hall, when a person just came running towards us with a blasting message that we have won the competition. Nothing but smiles circulated on everyone’s face with a few exceptions where smiles were packed with lots of thunderous voices even In fact it was by a very heavy margin that we left our opponents behind, on a scale of 10 we were close to 8 and just first runner up team had score around 5.5 and score dipping down further with the second runner up team.

(From Left - Me, Babil, Rachit, Mahima, Ashwain, Rini, Annley, Sehtu, Rakhi, Lainu Celebrating the victory)

For the detailed script Click here!

Sir Tim Berners Lee - Part 1

Timothy John “Tim” Berners Lee – Mystery Man

Nothing to say sometimes; sums up lot more than what many can brief at many times. Tim Berner’s Lee is one of those grand personas, whom I’ve esteemed since the days when I understood the internet world. And nothing but that silent appreciation indeed pleads me to trap something about him into my collections. This compilation certainly worth as it seizes up some of his finest snapshots of life which I came across to over a period of time, indeed difficult to browse at a lone spot.

A physics graduate from the Queen’s college, Oxford University, England at Jus’ 21 years of age (1976) once was caught hacking at college network with a friend & was banned subsequently from using the university computer but who knew that the same person will provide the biggest platform for whole of this planet to hack one day.

Tim is married to Nancy Carlson. They have two children, born 1991 and 1994. His parents were both mathematicians who were part of the team that programmed Manchester University's Mark I, the world's first commercial, stored program computer, sold by Ferranti Ltd. One day when he was in high school Berners-Lee found his dad writing a speech on computers for Basil de Ferranti. Father and son talked about how the human brain has a unique advantage over computers, since it can connect concepts that aren't already associated. For example, if you are walking and see a nice tree, you might think about how cool the park is under the trees, and then think of your backyard, and then decide to plant a tree for shade behind your house. Young Berners-Lee was left with a powerful impression of the potential for computers to be able to link any two pieces of previously unrelated information. He also built a computer using an old television, soldering iron, M6800 processor adjoining all his zeal within.

Plessey Telecommunications Ltd hired him as a programmer in 1976, where he worked for 2 years to join D.G. Nash Ltd. for another two.

It was 1980 when he landed as an independent software consultant at CERN - Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (World’s largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva). There he wrote a Hypertext program for his personal use to help him remember the connections between thousands of researchers and hundreds of systems at the lab. He named that program as “Enquire” (and called it as a “Memory substitute”) after an old book he found in his house during childhood days; which fascinated him as it magically contained the answer to any problem in the world. He indeed successfully dedicated his life to make that babyhood fascination an actuality.

He left CERN in 1981 and took a fellowship at CERN again in 1984 to work on distributed real-time systems and almost immediately started trying to get the official funding for his hyper-text project. It was in 1989 when he proposed a global hypertext space to be created in which network accessible information could be referred to by a single “Universal Document Identifier (UDI)” and only after getting it sanctioned by his boss “Mike Sendall”, he wrote first www server “httpd” & the first client named “WorldWideWeb”- A point & click editor which ran on the NeXT machines. This work got started in October 1990 & released in summers of 1991 to the High Energy Physics community & hypertext and NeXT communities. A student “Nicolas Pellow” at CERN also made available a “line-mode” browser which could be run on almost all the systems.