Small But Beautiful

Hope and Despair

By Sonika Rajkumari, New Delhi

After 5 months I am back just to share some of my little experiences with you again as I have always been writing about my experiences here so far. First of all I am not able to absorb the fact that we have got a l.o.o..o..ng and boring 3 months holidays from our college. I get faint whenever I think about it! So I thought lets get back to one of my part- time hobby (which is sometimes boring) that is writing.

This is about my wonderful experience during NOSPLAN (National Organization Of Students Of Planning) held for 4 days from 17th to 20th January in this year hosted by SPA (School Of Planning And Architecture), Delhi. Before I start I would like to mention names of my classmates as it is going to come again and again in this long article (my article is more like a long novel, but sorry I can’t help it). These names are Rajeev, Rayees, Jack, Ansu, Mithun, and Rashid who are Malayalam (mallu’s) students, Reshma is a Telegu, Anannya from Assam, Anuja and Amber from UP.

In the starting of 2nd SEM we went to Delhi for 10 days in the month of January to attend NOSPLAN and then we had classes in SPA Delhi. During these 4 days of NOSPLAN, the 2nd day is one of my favorite days of my life. Something unpredictable and startling happened that day which was beyond my dreams.

Many colleges like CEPT Ahmedabad, GNDU Amritsar, JNTU Hyderabad, SPA Bhopal, MANIT Bhopal, SPA Delhi including our college SPA Vijayawada and others attended NOSPLAN. The accommodation of all these colleges was arranged at Nizamuddin and Maharani Bagh.

The 1st day started with the introduction and small casual games. On 2nd day we had games after breakfast followed by Delhi-Darshan after lunch and then singing and dancing competition at 10p.m.

Reshma was pretty much excited given the dance competition between the colleges. She came to me with the idea of dancing and wanted me to teach her the steps. I have no problem on dancing but I need someone who can teach me steps as I can’t create dancing- steps of my own.

Our college was attending the NOSPLAN first time so we had no idea what actually is going to take place. It was difficult to take a decision to perform a day before the competition, particularly when the name of the college is in stake. We hadn’t got anyone in our class who dances well plus there were less time to practice with no proper costumes like other students of the colleges had.

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I thought it would be great fun if our college performs (though we could get 1st or 2nd from the last) but it would be a complete masti if we dance so that later we don't remorse, regretting we have spent time watching other colleges performence.

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In that case we can’t even scream our college name as there is a lot of fun in screaming and getting attention to the college in crowd. So we decided to practice. On 17th I hold a night there in Nizamuddin lodge. We got ready with laptops and a little open space in which we can at least move. We decided to perform on the last Para of the song ‘Hum hain rahi pyar ke, phir milengey chaltey chaltey’ from the movie ‘Rab ne bana di Jodi’ after selecting many songs. As already no one in our batch is a great dancer so we were searching for that kind of songs from which it would become easy for us to catch steps directly from the video of the song itself. We decided to fuse our song ‘hum hain rahi…’ with Rajeev’s and Anannya’s classical dance.

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I was first catching steps from video then I was teaching to Reshma and Ansu. Their body is not at all flexible; they were dancing as if they had hidden something under their arms.

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But I was ok with that as they wanted to dance and I was trying my best to teach them steps in much easier way. On another room Rajeev was practicing with Anannya. Later Ansu threw her hands up, she was not able to catch the steps at all, and she was rather doing a western dance in a classical way.

We needed dance partner for this song so I approached Rayees as Reshma’s partner and Rashid beside me. I was about to run away from that place as soon as they started dancing. They danced so stiffly and it was horribe. Rashid was not at all able to dance, so I thought better to set him free. Rayees at least know the ‘D’ of dance. No one was ready to dance they were not at all interested plus they wanted to sleep as it was 1 at night. In the middle of the practice I used to drag Rayees down from the bed whenever he runs away into the bed.

I was not able to find any dance partner for me who can at least knows the D of dance rest I was ready to handle. Then someone suggested Amber’s name. I went to his room he was sleeping peacefully. I woke him up and dragged him down on to the floor. As usually he was also not interested and said he didn’t know how to dance so better leave him. I knew if I teach him steps he could catch it easily so I forced him. Reluctantly he had to come and I started teaching steps to both of them. They were persistently pleading to let them sleep.

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I knew they might have been cursing me from inside but I was too strict at that point of time. We wrapped up at 3a.m., these three hours from 12 to 3a.m was not actually practice session but it was an hour in which we only learned steps.

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These two fellows who were dancing half-heartedly had forgotten all the steps next morning I didn’t know who had brain-washed their mind. We all had forgotten the steps what we had learned the last night. We needed time to practice just to recall all the steps plus there were two new members Anuja and Jack whom I had to teach dancing steps of the song. We were not at all expecting great performance from ourselves, as we hadn’t got any costumes which would be nearly relevant to the dress of Rani Mukherjee and Shah Rukh’s in the song.

Next day after breakfast we had some funny games between the colleges which were followed by Delhi-Darshan after lunch. My classmates were too excited about visiting places in Delhi as they were from the different part of the country and didn’t want to miss the chance to see Delhi. They dropped the idea of dancing considering that other colleges were far better than us from every aspect.

Here I stop my first part of my experience.

My second article would be answering the following questions:

Was my indefatigable effort to make my college presence in the NOSPLAN successful?

Do my friends buy my idea of dancing than their wish to visit Delhi?

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