Oasis 2k8

Whenever I look back at a certain eventful week in late October this year, an odd sort of feeling springs up, something that I can't quite put my finger on...like this feeling, my memories of Oasis, the college cult-fest, are also very difficult to sort out completely; sharp and vivid sometimes, hazy and obscure otherwise. Is that how things are meant to be? "Time and space all melded into 4 days of Unio Mystica". Who knows.

Newayz here goes my account of Oasis 2k8.....

To begin with, I guess Mafia Night really kicked the thing off :). I learned how to properly play Mafia (something like Killer-Dead that we used to play at RKM) two days before we spent a whole night playing it (October the 19th: fest began on the 20th), that too at Patel chowk. Going the whole night without sleep may not be uncommon for many BITSians but I'm an early riser, so this was very out of ordinary, but good fun all the same. 

Here's what strikes when I think of the fest itself ( in order of striking) -

#1)The first thing that I remember was KK. What a singer, and what a performer. The audi(ence) was simply spellbound by his voice and his energy, and did repay it to him in kind. When KK told us from the stage "You guys are louder than me!" I didn't believe him, what with those two gigantic curved speakers, but hollered back with the crowd anyway. Now that I see the vid and realize that we actually were drowning him out in the choruses. 

#2)Euphoria: They sucked. Totally. And that was a sore blow for me because Dhoom and Maaeri are among my favourite indipop songs. They arrived late, they spoilt their most beautiful songs (e.g. a line from Gully: "Tujhe palkon pe rakkhunga jee." became "Tujhe kamre me bithaakar lock kar ke rakh doonga, jeeeee-ee." What the hell :O) . To my increased dismay, they also left out many of their good original songs (Doha, Aasaan, Millenium and many others which though not very popular, are good, soulful songs) in a bid to play to the public. But even then, "gen dancing"(more leaping and pushing in the crowd than dancing :)) to any music absolutely "rokks" :)

P.S.: And I was so tired after that show that I slept off almost immediately after in the OEP booth, having asked Udit to wake me up after half an hour for the Lounge Piranha show. Udit said no problem, and fell into deep sleep a few minutes later. And we both missed what was supposedly the best gig this Oasis...

#3)Bani J: The thin-as-a-stick, dumb-as-hell MTV veejay was a horror, both visually and otherwise; she was walking all over BITS with her ghastly white face and ooodles of thadi, trying to get "cool sound bytes", as she put it, from the crowd mulling about. I had the misfortune to speak to her twice. I shall certainly remember each meeting :(

#4) Dance workshop:I can waltz pretty well now but not jive at all. DW was not quite the tour-de-force that I expected, but was still a fun learning experience. I think the guys from Delhi did a really awesome job of teaching something, step-by-step, within the span of two hours. Neel looked very beautiful doing the waltz, and we college students were made to do ring-a-ring-a-roses :D. Yup, I think that's about it.

#5) Food: Was even better, and costlier, than last year. CCD brought along some awesome MNB-type things called "Devil's Own"s. They cost Rs. 100 a glass, and single-handedly depleted around half of the money I'd saved to splurge on food and stuff. There was also the eventful time when GJ ordered a CCD veg-sandwich, which , somehow, started smelling 'non-veg' to him. After trying it a couple of times he decided it was rather 'fishy' and since you don't waste CCD stuff & since I was the only one with him then, I wolfed it down. 

What else? Crowds shouting "KK! KK!" during the wait for Euphoria, drowsily watching Choreo and Razmatazz, doing an impromptu onstage stint for EDC with some clothes and a Remington during the Stage Play competition, "Wake Up the Sleeping People and Ask them Dumb Questions" during Rocktaves ... and generally, a few other very happy memories...

Cheers,

SS