This is it! D day! The day that would be the culmination of the last 2 weeks of research and preparation. We were all ready and eager to broadcast live like TallSwiss and I had done from New Delhi. All scripts had been prepared, jingles recorded and shows practiced. We were ready.

And then the drama began.

ShortChef

Hotel management was hosting their crazy street food festival on the same day. So noise and chaos was expected around lunch hour. But even before that, their teacher, ShortChef, claimed that we had to move our stalls because we hadn’t booked any and we were using theirs. This is when I learnt a ton thanks to the beautiful damsels in my team.

• If you weren’t involved in the original planning or organization, then stay out of any value judgements and opinionating in the end. We have enough uncles and couch-activists going around already.
• No matter what may be, pick your side and stay with it.
• Questioning the decisions made by your leader should be done when the time and place are right. And, in front of someone from the opposite camp is definitely not the right time.
• Someone that plays the system by its own unsaid rules comes out the winner when compared to someone who blindly follows the rules.
• At the end of the day, shit sorts itself out. Stay calm.

Mr. Cool

PGS was a sight to see, coolly working through the chaos and calmly dissing out anybody that questioned his authority. It was a good quality in a leader: to be calm and confident in the knowledge that you’ve sorted everything out beforehand. I appreciated a statement that he made – if anybody asks you, please tell them to go talk to Dr. PGS. And then I’ll handle their questions. Very powerful statement for a leader to make, very assuring that he’s got your back.

His impression on me grew when he sat down with the artists, read me, and prepared the set list, writing names in his own creative hand. It takes a modest man to get down from his managerial pedestal. It was a small thing that I couldn’t have imagined HOD do ever.

Live broadcast

Group 1 broadcast their 1 hour and we realized that we were sitting inside big brother’s den. It seemed that any live show will be blocked by the strong firewall set up by the Uni to block any malpractice.

YZ lost it for a bit, packed up and tried moving the set up to his office room, realized the same problem existed there too, and quickly shifted to plan B. We would record and broadcast a day later. All this resulted in me sitting at the stall for an hour, playing our only recording for the day, as I watched students of the campus walk by. That was some experience, holding fort, after all the drama from the morning.

Relationships

Our own recording was the last one for the day. Overall, a good job, I’d say. FaujiWife and her Swiss man were good, clearly nervous and mixed up the songs in their list. But we managed through all those little issues. FaujiWife’s Swiss was pretty impressed with our how natural TallSwiss and I sounded on the radio. New Delhi helped, I must say.

House parties

I’d like for some people to involve themselves in work as much as they do in play. But as soon as the recordings were done, a bunch of girls started planning the evening out. Even I was excited to meet them for one last time for a drink. But very soon the whole plan snowballed into them planning to book an AirBnB or a service apartment, hosting a party there and staying over for the night. Just the idea tickled me and I stayed out of it.

Turns out the plan flopped and by the time I reached home they had changed the plan and went to a pub to drink. Missed opportunity.