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Phew... In the past 23 years of my existence, I have never seen and felt so much enthusiasm, fun, talent, coordination, hard work, partying, planning, panic, strategy, contingency, bonding, unity, and to sum it all... PURE MAGIC!!! Yes, I am indeed talking about T-Nite 2006. These words can only hint at what the T-Nites are all about... You got to feel it to understand its magic... I will describe each day of the event in installments in the next couple of days...

First, let me describe the format of T-Nites. They lasts for four nights and are about inter-section contests among the five sections of first year students - A, B, C, D and X (X is of the PGP-Executive Course, started this year). The first two events take place at the mess which are very informal events with a small makeshift stage and all the tuchchas sitting on the floor and cheering / booing us, depending on how exciting the performance is. Each section is allotted a time-slot of about 20 minutes. The time included your entry and exit in the mess, and penalty points are deducted if you exceed the allotted time. There are points given on hosts of factors ranging from strength of class participation, posters, enthusiasm level of the class and the actual performances. The mess nights are such that you can not have any plays or something very formal and high-class kind of stuff... They are meant for lots of masti, and thus, you need great dances on catchy songs that can keep the boisterous audience riveted... the music must never stop!!! The last two nights take place at the auditorium about which I will write later.

On the first day, the T-Nite is officially inaugurated by the PUB-RUN that takes place in the afternoon. OK, before you get weird ideas, let me explain what it is. It stands for "Publicity Run". Basically, each section has to put up posters in the mess complex for their publicity. In order to decide which section gets which places on the mess complex walls, this run is held. Getting the ideal places for your posters is super crucial. So what happens is that there are 10 runners from each section. The entire batch (all sections) gathers at some distance away from the mess. When the whistle blows off, the first runner of each section runs off into the mess complex, carrying newspapers / cloths marked with their section names on them. It's kind of a race - who reaches first to get the best places. So when a guy pastes his newspaper on the wall, then that place is booked for that section. Once the pub-run is over, the section can come, remove the paper and put its poster there. After one minute of the first runners, the second set of runners of each section dart off and so on... till the last runner. The total time for pub run is 30 minutes.

Now I was the first runner from our section. It had started raining when all the sections had gathered outside just before the beginning. The preps were frantic. All the runners were carrying huge newspapers / cloths (which had been prepared for the last few days) with their section names, etc. Tapes of different shapes, types and sizes were pasted on our shirts, body and wherever there was space, so that we don't have to struggle for tape inside the mess. Vaise, the papers already had the double-sided tapes but still...

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* Contributed by -
Vinamra Srivastava (Campus Associate),
PGP - 1,
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.