Chaos 2008

The sixth term was always going to be special for me. Two things about which I was passionate about all during my second year were to be materialized in this term. Sangharsh was the first to take place and though ended in a disappointment, gave me memories that will last for more than a lifetime. And then came the other….for which I had probably worked the hardest in IIMA and which was destined to leave me extremely satisfied and joyous, with memories that were to become my friends for life.
Chaos is the annual cultural festival of IIMA and as a fachcha, I was a team member in the last year’s edition. This year, I didn’t want to be in the organizer’s team for both Confluence (our biz fest) and Chaos since that would have meant my entire second year being taken up by these two activities. Confluence was a much well oiled machine and had been running smoothly, while Chaos, though successful, was still not the perfect fest one hoped for and therein lay the challenge for me. I decided to skip conflu and focus all my energies on Chaos, to play my bit in making Chaos a much more successful and smoother event for the future generations of WIMWIans.
ToTo was the Chaos secy and I was given charge of my fav portfolio, the PR team. Something even more special happened as well. This year, unlike last year, ToTo decided to have a 3 member core team from amongst the heads of all the sub-teams. This core team was supposed to manage all the numerous other teams and act as interface to ToTo, since it was tough for him to micromanage everything himself. And to my delight, I was chosen to be one of the 3 core team members, and hence responsible for not only PR, but effectively the entire Chaos, along with my other core team members. I was delighted since this meant additional responsibility and made me feel much closer to the event that had got me extremely passionate….and so began the long but exciting journey of preparation for what would be my last big event at IIMA.

The PR team was responsible for mainly two huge activities – Passes and Publicity. Passes involved all stuff right from the pricing to pass policies to the actual sale, while publicity incorporated everything from outdoor publicity to media coverage. It was going to be an extremely arduous but critical task and I had the support of 4 tuchchas and 10 fachchas in my team. Strategies were starting to get formulated from November. We aspired for a huge crowd as well as financial success, to ensure not only that this Chaos goes down as the biggest ever, but also that the future events are free from financial constraints. This made all pass related decisions extremely critical and we had to ensure that we get everything right from pricing to actual sales in order to achieve our expected results. It was pretty much like a real sales and marketing experience, with a huge amount of money at stake.
The next two months ensured that I was up late nights and my bike was put to maximum use as I went about planning and implementing strategies with the help of my entire team. I made many new contacts in the process in different places. McDonalds, My FM, CCD…..I had made friends with managers of various outlets in the city who were involved with Chaos. My negotiation skills were put to great tests as we went about dealing the terms and conditions with the partners. At the same time, we were almost done with the list of artistes that were going to perform during the 4 nights of Chaos and based on that, the pricing and the sales strategy was almost finalized. Till dec end, things were very smooth and Chaos preps were just another one of the many activities I kept myself busy with. However, come Jan and things started to heat up, and I started sensing how close the event was and automatically, my entire energy was channelized in just one direction, I had only one aim in mind and everything else blacked out in front of that….we had to ensure that this is the best Chaos this institute has ever seen.

All the on-ground work and implementation of various plans started in jan. The partners and venues for pass sales were finalized and so were the deals with other publicity partners. The posters and other publicity material were printed and I must say, the creatives team had indeed done a very good work with them. My otherwise neatly kept room was turned upside down the day printed passes arrived. There were nearly 25000 passes of different formats depending on the performance day as well as the class. All these were kept in my room since that’s the only way I could have kept track of where each pass was going. The floor of my room was full of stacks of passes and crossing my room from the door to the balcony became a game of hop and jump ! But these passes were not yet ready for sale. In order to keep a track, each pass had to be numbered according to a specific series. Furthermore, to prevent counterfeiting, each pass had to undergo certain security steps we had decided on. All this meant dedicated manual labour and for the next 2-3 days, many fachchas from diff teams came over to my dorm, spread all the stuff in the TV room and got down to work. It was a sight to remember. The big room was filled with passes, pens, glues and what not, with 10-12 people sitting on the floor in the form of mini assembly lines, making each pass fit enough to go out to market. Just a week before Chaos, all passes were ready and I had planned out the sale in such a structure that at any instant, I would know which pass no. was sold at which location by which fachcha and at what date.
I had decided that this time, I will record every detail in such a way that the next Chaos team can make coherent conclusions from this data and hence take future decisions. Thus, every pass sale and every publicity related event was carefully planned and recorded so that meaningful conclusions could be drawn any moment. CCD was one of our main pass distribution outlets and each fachcha was made incharge of one outlet. He would give passes to the outlet, keep track of the sales at his outlet and get me back all the cash and remaining passes from that outlet in the end. Apart from this, the team was also selling passes through various other avenues including malls. And yes, just like last year, we again distributed Chaos fliers through newspapers – which essentially implied being at the newspaper distribution vendors at 3 in the night to ensure that the work is done effectively. Even though most of this work was coordinated by my other teammates, I still had to make a couple of visits at 3 am to ensure everything was going smooth.

3-4 days to go and preps were in full swing….pass sale was picking up, slowly but surely….radio had started advertising the event…banners and hoardings were up…all the other Chaos teams were almost ready for the event to start, construction of the stage had started at the LKP and I had not slept for, I forgot how many nights !
And then, like a jolt out of the blue, something happened that sucked the wind out of us. I vividly remember that fateful night 2-3 days before Chaos. I was riding my bike with a teammate behind me, both of us braving the chilly Jan night winds on the highway. My hands were virtually frozen as I drove faster to ensure we reach Nirma Univ quickly – we were going there to sell passes at their canteen during dinner time. I was initially not supposed to go due to the huge amount of work I had on campus, but due to unavailability of a vehicle, I ended up riding my bike. Just as we reached our destination, my phone rang. Since I was parking the bike, I asked my teammate to pick it up. As I saw his face change colours, I sensed something was not right. “Chaos has been cancelled due to the death of a family member of one of our profs !” As the words came out of his mouth, I felt my grip on the bike weakening. My mind was numb and I didn’t know how to react. On one hand my heart went out to professor and his family…and on the other images of months of hard work and sleepless nights flashed through my minds…and then I started thinking about the future and all the contracts we had made and all the passes we had sold and….”Vinz, there is an emergency batch meet at 9. We have to leave immediately.” His words jolted me out of my thoughts. Rarely had so many thoughts entered my mind at the same time and I knew I had to shake them all off and rush back to campus.
I don’t think I would have driven my bike faster ever. The chill in the wind was of no consequence now. My mind was too occupied to be bothered by anything else and I drove in a pseudo trance till I reached campus. I bolted to the RJM where the meet was to take place. As I entered, I saw ToTo, grim and worried. I had a brief chat with him and he updated me on the situation. For the next hour, there were discussions and debates in the auditorium, with all of us trying to reach some sort of consensus as to what our future course of action should be. It was finally decided that we will have a talk with the relevant authorities to see if there is still some way to conduct the event at a later date in a condensed version. Till then, Chaos had been postponed indefinitely.

As I walked out of RJM, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Chaos had become my baby and I could sense the helplessness of seeing it slip away from my hands, unable to protect it. For the next couple of days, millions of meetings took place, trying to give this problem a practical solution. And then it happened. We were told that we can conduct the event next weekend instead of the scheduled one, and that instead of 4 days, it will now be reduced to 3 days. The Chaos team had an emergency meeting that night and we briefed everyone about the situation. We were all glad that the event was back on track but at the same time, we knew its going to be even tougher challenge coz we had to undo a lot of things we had done earlier and then redo them differently. Rebooking the artistes, renegotiating the sponsorship contracts, handling the passes for which the refund process had already started and printing the publicity material/passes again with the new dates were just some of the problems that needed immediate attention.
We four, the core team and ToTo, met up after the meeting to chalk out the plan for the next 7 days. We braced ourselves up for the sleepless nights that were to follow but we all had one thing in common – the zeal and passion to make Chaos a hit despite the setback it had suffered. The next week was as tough as it could get, but I enjoyed each and every moment of it. Somehow I was bestowed with infinite energy when it came to Chaos and I knew that I will be at my best till the very last night of Chaos.
Everything was executed as planned and as the D-day approached, the pass sales picked up, motivating us even further to give it everything we had. One day before Chaos, the sales counter at the main gate started to witness long queues and that’s when we knew we have hit the jackpot. I was very sure that we are in for a bumper sale and our dream of seeing a houseful Chaos is closer to fulfillment. My name was mentioned as the contact point on every publicity material that went out in the city including the newspaper ads. As a result, my phone did not stop ringing for last 2 days and I knew that’s how it’s going to be till Chaos ends. It was maddening but I ensured I remain polite with everyone and welcome them to the event.

Come D-day, 1st Feb and there was a buzz of excitement all around the campus. By the evening, huge queues had already formed at the LKP entrance. Fachchas were busy selling tickets at the main gate which was so crowded that IIM guards had to be called in to maintain order and security. I had also taken charge of the security along with the security team heads and I was shuttling between the main gate and the LKP to ensure things were smooth at both ends. It was a scene of high voltage activity with our walkie-talkies crackling every other minute. After regular intervals, there will be some high pitched voice informing us about some incident that needs immediate attention. One of us would reply that we are close to the scene and will attend to it and then rush to that spot. I had allocated duties of fahchas to sell tickets at the main gate during all 3 nights in such a way that everyone got to witness at least some portion of the show and have some fun. We had to ensure that there’s no security breach since the crowd was only increasing in intensity. At the same time, there was some seriously huge cash being collected at the main gate ticket counter and I had to ensure that there’s safety on that front as well. But my fachchas were a great help and for all 3 days of Chaos, they ensured that they handled the ticket sale responsibility well since I got busy in other stuff like security and sorting out any urgent incident.
Fuzon was the main band to perform on the first night and they indeed mesmerized the crowd with their hits such as ‘tere bina’ and ‘aankhon ke sagar’. Later that night, it was time for the rock competition in the auditorium which lasted almost the entire night! And oh boy, I had never expected it to be such a huge hit. We were completely sold out and even then there was a huge queue for people to buy tickets somehow. It looked like a scene straight out of a movie theatre playing a much anticipated film for the first time. I managed the security at the auditorium for some time but was so exhausted by 3 am that I went back to my room and crashed, with a hope to get at least some sleep before the bigger days to come.The second day was reserved for Dance competitions and the fashion show, which were as usual dominated again by NID. NID has been a consistent achiever at these two events at Chaos for the past few years and this year was no different. The night also saw the music video launch of Gaurav Dahaonkar’s, an IIMA alumni, first ever music album.
And then to culminate Chaos came the biggest night of all, the one that entire Ahmedabad had been waiting for. We knew this was the night that will determine how big a success Chaos actually becomes. The queue that evening got longer and longer and the rush at the tickets counter was unprecedented. I had to send extra fachchas to open up another desk to ensure smooth sale of passes. I had never seen such a huge crowd on campus. Thousands of people flocked the otherwise serene LKP lawns. As far as the eye could see, there were people and more people, all of them waiting anxiously for the stage to erupt. I was going crazy trying to handle the events at the main gate as well as LKP but the enthusiasm and excitement was too high for me to get tired. And while I was on my way to the LKP, I heard a huge uproar and shrieks of thousands of fans and I knew the moment has finally arrived. All our months of hard work boiled down to this one artist who we knew will rock this event. The lights went dim, a guitar came to life and there he was…singing as melodiously as one ever could…..KK was on stage and it looked as if entire city was on the LKP ! We had taken great pains to get KK to perform at Chaos despite the rescheduling of the event. But we knew that he is a super performer and he alone can turn the tide of Chaos. And that’s exactly what happened.
For the next couple of hours, KK mesmerized the audience with his phenomenal energy, stamina, charisma and melody….every song that he sang was a huge hit with the crowd. I was initially not present when the show started. But after some time, I heard bambu’s voice crackle on my walkie-talkie – “Vinz come in…plz leave all work now and come to the front of the stage…entire chaos team is there to enjoy KK and only u r missing” ! I smiled and headed for the LKP. As I reached the front of the stage, right next to where KK was singing, I saw the entire Chaos team distributed on the two sides of the stage, singing and dancing ! As soon as I reached there, bamboo snatched my walkie and kept it in his bag, signaling me to stop work finally now and enjoy the fruits of success :)
For the next hour or so, we sang and danced as if there was no tomorrow. KK had truly rocked Chaos and by the time he left, we were all over the moon, knowing that this was a grand success. ToTo went on stage at the end of it all, thanked everyone and called the entire Chaos team up on the stage. We all jumped up with joy and thanked the audience….the smiles on our face telling the entire story. We were all like kids who have been suddenly given a great birthday gift….this was the gift we all had been waiting for since long.

As the crowd dispersed and the team got into the infinite photo sessions and media interviews, I and bamboo looked at each other and smiled. We both have had a tiresome past few months in ensuring that Chaos ends in no less spectacular way than this. We have had countless discussions and debates during countless sleepless nights….he was the logi incharge and he knew he had done a great job as well. ToTo was ecstatic as expected….and deservedly so ! We had not only witnessed one of the grandest Chaos ever, but were successful financially as well to secure the future of Chaos.
I could not sleep that night even though my legs felt like a log. After the euphoria had subsided, the mind began to put the pieces together…..the huge expectations, financial constraints, months of hard labour, the near end of Chaos even before it began, the mind boggling crowd…..and the bonds of friendships that I secured – the past few months seemed like a fairytale !

Its been almost one year now, but the thrill is as fresh as it was that night. I can still hear the din of the crowd, I can still see the happiness in ToTo’s eyes, I can still feel the chill in the air that touched me as I stood alone at LKP after the show…….As I look longingly at the Chaos poster I had saved with me, somewhere deep inside I yearn…yearn for time to rewind…rewind to those days of immortal bliss...those days whose memories will light up my day and moisten my eyes at the same time all my life….