Chaos 2007

I could no longer let this blog die. The guilt of not updating it during the entire third term has become over powering now. Its not that I didn’t get time; in fact I had plenty of that. It was just that I had become too lazy J But anyways, now that I am back, over the next few posts, I am gonna lay down what transpired during the third phase of the fachcha life at IIM-A.

The term started in Jan 2 week. We were all fresh and raring to go. The reason? Well, this was the last term of the bondage called fachchadom ! Our only motivation to survive this last phase was that after this, we will be the kings of WIMWI J. The tuchchas had warned us that this is not at all like the second term. In fact, its pretty much like the first term revisited. WAC was back, so was Operations. And add to that Finance-2 and you can rest assured that the term is gonna be killing. And what makes it worse is that the amount of group work is huge. But along with all this, theres lots of non-acads stuff that happens and thus if u r enthu, usure will have a blast !Well, as the term got on, we got a hang of what the tuchchas meant !

I will go into the acads part and the strains of excessive group work in the next post. Coz I reserve this one for CHAOS ! Yeah, the annual cultural extravaganza of IIM-A. Chaos lasts for 4 nights and 3 days. Its an inter college cultural fest that consists of various competitions, fun games and hosts eating stalls and what not. So all in all, it’s a fun place to be in J All this happens in the day time and after 6pm takes place something called as a celebrity night where music bands perform for a huge audience. Each of the 4 nights see different music stars take the centre stage. Unlike confluence, Chaos is not restricted to only B-schools. It attracts colleges from all streams all across the country, which essentially implies its much more fun J But the purpose both conflu and chaos is entirely different and hence any comparison is not justified.

Anyways, so I was a part of the Admin team of chaos. We were essentially responsible for 2 things. One was the tickets and other was the admin helpdesk that is put up during the event. However, there was a lot of overlap with the publicity team and hence we also ended up doing a bit of publicity work as well. Chaos hosted about 30000 to 35000 people last year and hence all functions related to the tickets sale were very crucial and exciting as well. We had decided to put holograms as well as serial nos on each ticket that classified them into different type. This work was not outsourced to a vendor for some reasons. And hence few days before the sale started, the entire admin team with help from some other team fachchas would sit in the night and put get the tickets ready. Oh boy, what nights they were. We all would sit in the common area in the dorm with the TV on, and chat with each other along with the work. And then we would pester the tuchchas and actually threaten to stop work till they got us something to eat from CT J All in all, those were tiring, sleepless but fun nights.

But the tiring nights didn’t end there. We had to put fliers in Times of India as a part of the publicity plan. The work was outsourced to the appropriate guys but we still had to be there to ensure that its executed properly. And hence there I was, sometimes with couple of teammates, at times alone, from 3 in the night to 5 in the morning, at the newspaper distribution hub in Ahmedabad, ensuring that those guys properly put all the Chaos fliers in the news papers. oh man ! wat an experience that was J I witnessed the entire process of what happens when the news papers arrive at 3 am and are distributed to various vendors. It happened at one of the main roads in Ahmedabad. The footpaths would be full of paperwalas putting various fliers in the papers, separating the papers for diff localities and finally trudging them along on cycles and scooters. There would be so much of commotion in the wee hours of the morning. It was fascinating to see the kind of intense work that goes behind the scenes to ensure that we get our morning newspapers right when we get up from sleep !
Then we would take turns and sit at the tickets counter on campus. We were selling tickets through CCD and Dominoes outlets. So 4 of the CCDs were under my charge. Hence I had to visit them to put our banners etc. and then visit them frequently to collect the tickets sale money. The entire prep for the event was tiring but fun. It was very diff from the work I did for conflu. This involved more out of campus trips and interactions with vendors.

Chaos started on the eve of 25th Jan with a classical music function followed by a sweedish band that played fusion stuff. It was really awesome and perhaps the best performance of Chaos. What followed in the next 4 days was pure masti with stars like Junoon, Remo and Silk Route gracing the evenings and events/worksops/contests ranging from photography to pot making to self grooming during the daytime personally for me, it was a super hectic time coz managing such a huge crowd and coordinating the plethora of events across 4 days was a huge challenge for the entire chaos team. I used to just got to my room I the night to sleep for few hours and would be back early next morning. Reminded me of the conflu days !! My room would be in total mess J But it was great fun and completely new experience for me right in the beginning of the third term.

Another one of the times when I realized that life at this place truly rocks. I just wanted to savour each and every moment, be it standing at the newspaper vendor at 3 am or dancing to the band performances; I knew these would be the golden times of my life that I would cherish forever. Chaos got over on 28th night. And after all the hungama, the grueling 3rd term was staring at us, reminding us of the stressful 1st term and ready to show us again why the first year of IIMA makes you as tough as steel !

So how did we cope up ? How was it different from the first term ? Did OM and Fin haunt us as MANAC did in the previous 2 terms ? And apart from Chaos, did we have any more fun in this last term ? All this and more coming up soon J