A Tryst With Musec!!!

“And the second prize goes to Meenakshi College”, boomed singer Unni Menon’s voice through the mike. “Oh man!” sighed the students of the the college who had lost and sadly put their hands together to congratulate the winning team. They threw an envious look at the other team as they leapt with joy, in a sort of ecstasy.

Meanwhile, a few kms away in a second floor apartment in T.Nagar, the telephone rang. Two people hurdled towards the phone. The elder among the two picked up the phone. “Hello”. “Hello ma, this is Sujatha”, after a brief pause she said, ‘we lost’. The receiver’s voice dropped, but gained courage to say, “Its ok, good job”. She cut the line. The other one neither needed nor asked for an explanation. She went to the other room and took out her maths text book and continued her study - That was me.

This was the scene on 7th March, 2005 at approximately 8 pm. My sister’s college band had participated in the “Saptha Swarangal” inter-collegiate competition, reached the final and ended up as runners-up. This is how the things unfolded:

I remember my sister often complaining to me about her college being very strict and the absence of any extra curricular activity. Sujatha, who is fond of singing used to tell me – “You know what, SSN College has a music band of their own”.

An unexpected symposium in their college forced them to create a band to perform. Harini (an accomplished keyboard player) and Ravi (male vocalist) tried and brought together the best of talents from the juniors and seniors and that’s how the band was formed. Well, Shriram took charge of the rhythm pads, Prashanth the guitar, Bharadwaj chose to be the percussionist along with Srikanth becoming the “Krishna” (the eternal flute player) of the hurriedly assembled band. Aishwarya and Arthy were to lend support on the keyboards. Venkat Balaji and Natarajan were the other male vocalists while Sujatha and Ranjini provided the female voices.

One fine day, my sister came home in a rush and told us that the band was going for the saptha swarangal auditions. She went for practice and the next day we got the news that they were selected. The funnier thing was that they had the first round of competition on the next morning itself. That left just about half a day for selection of songs and practice; their opponents were - guess who - SSN College of engineering! The practice scheduled for 3:15 started at 5:15pm , with about twelve people cramped in our house. They practiced the whole night and slept for hardly about 30 minutes. It was a rare sight to see all the instrumentalists sleep over their instruments and over one another. Next morning, they all headed towards the Sun TV office. We just hoped they didn’t sleep during the performance!

After about six hours of tortuous wait we got the call. They had won! It was the most joyous moment of our life. We felt as though they had got a Grammy award!!! I jumped up and down. But that meant they had to put up a better performance in the next round. Their practice sessions collided with my preparations for the X board exams, and on the day I returned from my first board exam, the house was overflowing with people. The musicians in one room and the singers in another. I could hear full throated shouts (?) of “sukhama khamaya vigmahey”…. one of the songs for the next round. Wow!

I struggled to find place for myself in the crowd. My next paper was Maths, but I had six days before it and the entire practice session hovered around these 6 days. The next surprise was that they had defeated a formidable Hindustan College of Engineering - thanks to the guidance of Girish (I should be calling him anna!), an alumnus of the college. A case of friend turning foe!

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Then, they defeated SHASTRA…..by now we got used to the surprises and the band’s winning ways. There was just one more round to go, the final. With my Maths board exam coming up and the sound of rocking music traveling around the house, the tension crept in. I was getting distracted but I refused to give up. I shut the door and concentrated on Mathematics. Surprisingly, they had just one day for the final. Honestly, I believe, they didn’t use the time they got in the morning appropriately. They came home at about 10 AM and actually started practicing at 9pm. With four rounds to practice for which included an own composition, they struggled through another sleepless night. But the practice paid off. Thanks again to Girish (anna) who came up with a great composition “ninaivugale”.

They were quite confident and made their way to the Sun TV office in Sridevi call taxi, which they considered to be a lucky charm! At 11:45 am my sister called up and said that they were performing first. They weren’t very happy with that because they had all along been performing second and had been winning. This was thought to be unlucky. They gave it their best shot. But unfortunately, neither lucky charms nor prayers worked. They were defeated by a strong team from KCG College of Engineering.

But it had been an eventful week, full of masti, magic, masala and of course MUSIC! I would have enjoyed it better but for the board exams. I keep recollecting those funny moments when the female vocalists would shut themselves in a room and shout at the top of their voices (they were actually trying to reach the high pitch!). And again those occasions when the boys sent missed calls to their friends for no reason at 2 AM! Though I wasn’t involved in it, it had been so good to experience mixed feelings of anxiety, happiness, sadness…..And you know what, I did my maths exam pretty well!! My ‘fave’ among the songs was “Veerapandi Kotaiyiley” that included every member of the band. In short, it was the “JOSHILA” performance!!!! A great song like this included the cooperation and synchronization of the entire band. The band was united, hence the song came out good…..and I just hope this band remains well knit for ever.

Music of Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College; “M U S E C” is here to stay.