Those enchanted four and half years

Chapter 21

           Few days later, when Amey came back, he did not mention anything about the Valentine day. I too never mentioned it to him. But it remained etched somewhere in the back of my mind.

Meanwhile, time came for our annual gathering.This year gathering was the responsibility of our batch. During the elections held in our batch by opinion poll, Tarun Bhalerao was elected the general secretary; Yash was boys' representative, and Anusha girls' representative. Our gathering celebrations were to last for four days. First day comprised of various competitions such as Badminton, Table Tennis, Carom and Chess. Second day, we had drama night. Third day was the music night, which mainly included songs sung by students in Hindi as well as their vernacular languages, and fourth day was the cultural night, where students performed dances, skits and mimicry's.

As Tarun declared the gathering dates about one and a half months earlier, we all began our preparations for the mega-event. The air was charged with excitement. We no longer paid any attention to what we were being taught in lectures, practicals or clinics. All we could think of was gathering, gathering, gathering! Every batch would strive for special nomenclatures for their gathering and various events. After a lot of discussions (heated as well as cold ones), scratching of lots of heads and scanning through lots of books and dictionaries, we finalized on the name 'Dhanvantari – 99' for the mega-event. Sports day was named 'Kurukshetra – 99', drama night 'Apurvai – 99', cultural night 'Ashwamedh – 99' and songs night 'Swaranjali – 99'. '99' because our admission batch was 1999.Tarun immediately divided the batch into groups to handle each event. For each event, a president, a vice-president, a treasurer and an event manager was chosen from that group.

"I will participate in dance," I said. "Me too," Nayana said. "If I dance, I don't think the stage will remain one piece. I think I will go for singing," Sufee said.

"And I will not participate in anything," Arun said.

"Why?" we asked in unison.

"Because if I participate, you will have no audience left," he laughed.

"Shut up and get lost!" Sufee said. We all laughed. And thus began our preparations for the event. Every morning I would rush to college and rush back to the hostel in the evenings, looking forward to dance practice. I, Nayana, Arun and Prasad were going to dance on a fusion of three songs, which included 'Mehboob mere' from 'Fiza', 'Prem jaal mein fas gayi' from 'Jis desh mein Ganga rehta hai' and 'Piya Piya' from 'Har dil jo pyaar karega'. Arun was my partner, Prasad was Nayana's.

There was an old building known as 'Old dean's office', short form 'ODO', which was lying vacant since long. We opened and cleaned the place for our dance practice. Dance practice was great fun. There was no choreographer; rather we ourselves were our self proclaimed choreographers. And each of us would want a different step for each sequence. We were no professional dancers, so our dance practice must have been fun to watch for the onlookers. We would alternately trip down; forget steps too frequently; there would be no coordination in our movements, each one danced in his own rhythm, at his own pace. But for us, it was great fun. Each day, after practice, we would go to SP for a cup of coffee and laugh our hearts out, remembering our fiascos during dance practice.. It took us a lot of practice to get the moves right, to match the rhythm of the song and to dance in coordination.

Sufee's song practice was a compulsory programme for me and Sneha. She would keep reciting till late night. Finally having been left with no other option, I and Sneha too started singing with her. But I must admit, Sufee had a gifted, melodious voice, and she sang from all her heart. Sometimes we would go to watch the drama rehearsals which were going on in the Indira Gandhi auditorium. Drama practice used to be fun too, and on a larger scale. Most of the times, the actors would forget their dialogues, other times, they would deliver them at the wrong times. Watching drama practice was a good time-pass for us. I, sufee, Nayana, Vivek and Arun regularly went to watch it. As the gathering dates came nearer, the intensity of our practice grew tremendously. We started bunking college lectures and practicals in order to practice. Of course we were not spared by our teachers. Their warnings and scolding's continued. But we didn't care. All we could think of was gathering, gathering, gathering!