It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No wait, it’s another cliched phrase. For lack of a better beginning, we’re back people. Saarang 2012 is here. It promises to be *better* (and possibly bigger, but let’s leave that for the crowd to decide)Last year we had a lot on our plate. A mind-boggling set of 60 events which included dramatics, choreo, speaking events, music, quizzes etc.
It was 4 days and 5 nights of pure bliss. And not to mention, we also got the ISO 9001:2008 certification last year. You know what that means? It means we’re certified “awesome”!
Usually, lectures are thought of as boring. We, however, beg to differ. We had a host of lectures by eminent personalities such as Shriya Saran, Bombay Jayshree, Shaji N. Karun, Hari Menon, Alarmel Valli, Thotta Tharani and many more. Also, for the first time, we hosted an MUN (Model United Nations) right here at Saarang (in collaboration with the UN office for India and Bhutan), which turned out to be quite interesting with everyone walking around in formals at the IC&SR auditorium.
We also set a new standard for Professional shows last year. Apart from the usual Rock Show, Popular night and Classical night, we had a set of “Mini-Proshows” featuring Havikoro, In Vivo, Laurent Decol, Asaf Avidan and the Mojos under the banner of a “World Culture Show” which had all of SAC brimming with excitement. The cultural night with Mallika Sarabhai and her dance troupe, Darpana was enthralling. They put up a show like no other on the OAT stage. The popular night had KayKay wooing the audience with his songs and who can forget the night on which Pain of Salvation rocked OAT!
We swear, at one point in the show, PoS left the stage, only to return two minutes later in an auto-rickshaw! (God knows how much he charged them for going a distance of 20m, considering they were Firangs!)
Does anyone remember the Saarang village last time? It was a traditional Kerala village, set up next to OAT. (There was also a sign mentioning “Useless water”, although we suspect it meant “Use Less water”). The food there was exquisitely Malayali cuisine and tasted awesome. Eating jaggery chips and Payasam, followed by a rock concert at OAT – how much more “Mallu” can you get! The sweltering Chennai heat (and not giving a damn about it), music blaring at all corners, people dancing all around, awkwardly asking that girl to accompany you to the dance workshop, chilling at the lounge, jumping up and down during proshows – all this makes up your regular Saarang.
Saarang 2012 resolves to be *better*. Come and experience it to see how.
Oh, and did we mention the name of the band we’re having for the Pro-show this time? Well, this time it’s going to be… not so soon folks! It’ll be revealed in due time. Keep coming back for more info!
We're literally "back"
Awesome stuff!