Saaz, the music competition was the first event to generate euphoria at Idea Verve 2008. Guitars, synthesizers, drums, flutes, tabla, singers and a wonderful audience — the morning had it all. Students were seen rehearsing diligently for their performance at the S P College grounds, where the intercollegiate fest took place.

Filling the ambience with music were nine teams from various colleges who after clearing the elimination rounds had made it to the semi-finals. Judges for the morning — Mrinal Kaur, Sujan Shetty the composers of a number of melodies including an ad jingle for - Dabur, along with Gaurav Mukharjee a composer and songwriter, had a tough time filtering out nine students for the semi finals. “Verve has been a memorable event right from our college days. It is great to see it grow bigger and bigger every year. In fact, the talent pool this year is so big that we have increased the number of semi finalists to nine instead of eight,” says an excited Mrinal Kaur.

The participants’ camp turned out to be a potpourri of mixed emotions. Excitement, tension and revenge all were on a clear display. “We were in the finals last year but we could not win. This time we are here to grab the title,” says a determined trio of Nilotpal Addy, Anirudh Sharma and Sidharth Bhatnagar of D Y Patil College of Engineering. The first ones to perform were AISSMS College of Engineering who presented songs like- Bawari piya ki, Dil se and Tere bin. Other participants for the concert were Sky Animation College who gave mind-blowing performances like Aa dekhen zara, Jhoom barabar jhoom along with a fusion composition of their own. Also seen were NDA cadets taking time out from their hectic schedules just to be a part of Idea Verve. “The authorities make an exception only for Verve and no other youth fest,” say NDA cadets Hari Louis and Sunit Mishra.

Pranav Kulkarni

Truly bizarre

It felt like a surreal dream, as teams gathered spectators and tried to sell them a father board, cream that would grow hair, a steel toothbrush and many more products that they didn’t need. Bizzare Bazaar as it is called or mad ads, is one of the most popular events at Idea Verve 08. Teams participating in this event are given unusual products and have to come up with equally unusual strategies to market these products. They also have to design and perform an ad to sell the product.

The event saw teams running around, singing, jumping and shouting in an attempt to market their products. There were people riding on shoulders as well as some lying prostrate on the ground, accompanied by a cacophony of teams trying to out shout each other. But there was definitly a lot of talent, with witty slogans and rhyming jingles to prove it.

The IIPM team had to sell a flute without a hole. In keeping with the approach of valentine’s day, like many other teams, they too used the theme of love in their ad. The SITM team enticed people to buy the snake belt by declaring its use as a means to kill one’s self or another, and that it was even a status symbol! Another team to use the love theme was the one from ILS Law College. They declared that if one was too timid to approach the object of their affection, all they had to do was send it via their paper boat, which when dropped into a water tank would pass through pipes and emerge out of a tap. Innovative in their approach, was the MITSOM team, that used their product, the “frothy fresh” bubblegum, to get them out of class and even a seat on a local train in Mumbai with their slogan, “a problem for every solution”. While students singlemindedly concentrated on marketing their products, judging the contest Neeraj Kothari, a software engineer from Infosys seemed to enjoy himself thoroughly.

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What’s your word’s worth

Are Indians emotional? Don’t panic! We are not getting into this discussion. But yes, addressing some topics like this was Wordsworth, the debate competition that saw varied subjects from politics in America to bird flu in India being discussed at length.

“Registration counter for Words-Worth is open and all those interested can register their names.” Just when the announcer declared this, more than 40 teams poured in to compete and express their views in this competition. Every team had two contestants where one had to speak for the topic and one against it. And despite a huge audience and a tight time limit, the participants were seen putting their point across very effectively giving a hard time to Kanupriya Mimani, judge for the contest. “Being at Verve is an experience of a lifetime and I must say that The Indian Express makes it really special,” she says.

As for the contestants, they were just too busy either praying for an easy topic or hearing out their competitors in rapt attention. “We love speaking extempore and that’s the reason why we are here at Words-Worth,” say Akshay Kulkarni and Rohan Adlakha from D Y Patil College of Engineering. Universal disarmament is a must, students of Metropolitan college of hotel management were seen debating on this topic while DICER got ready to voice out their opinions on Dot com or Doubt com.