The King that is not a Singh!

By Ratnika Sharma

You must have heard of Sumo wrestling, WWE fights, even martial arts taking place inside rings where the better opponent pushes the other one out. This Milan, there was a new addition in the form of King Of the Ring event which was a face off between two individuals who would show off their dancing skills inside a small ring in a one on one battle. Both performers were supposed to perform alternatively for the judges to evaluate easily.

If one did popping, the other countered with locking. If one did a cartwheel, the other answered with a head stand. With hands and feet flying in the air, the cheers and boos of the audience gave it a battleground feel.

There was a perfect display of some very nice street and hip hop dancing blended with the correct dose of attitude. Though, it did get dirty at one point with finger showing acts and some vulgar stunts. But that set the crowd hooting even more.

If the movie Step Up was a contest between two groups, King of the Ring was a contest between two individuals doing their best to win the judges’ points. The event was judged by Sachin and Ashwin, professional dancers of which Sachin has been awarded a scholarship in America to pursue dance.

At the end of a grueling bopping battle, Tyagu of Madras Christian College won the title, “outdancing” all the others.

This Milan edition has really seen some very novel and interesting events that have kept the SRMites going through this 4 day long fest!

War of the Words!

By Shruti Pillai

Playing with words was never this fun! “What’s the good word?” conducted by the Literati domain proved to be a huge success as the vocabulary wizards from various colleges battled each other with zeal like never before.

The competition was set in motion with a tricky written preliminary round where over 30 teams, consisting of three members each, were constantly brainstorming to make it into the finals. Each correct answer earned them one point. All the participants portrayed a sense of intense excitement in their quest to find the correct answers to the questions asked.

The six teams with the highest scores which made it to the finals had a challenging time showing their superiority over their opponents. Here, they played the exact opposite of Dumb Charades! One team member could give up to three verbal clues for a word selected using the chit system, (with absolutely no gestures) and each team had three guesses to get it right within 90 seconds, which obviously resulted in some amazing and hilarious results as well! A word like “Dalmatian” was used as a clue word for “cruelty”! Confused now? The famous movie 101 Dalmatians featured the character Cruella DeVille, who the team member was witty enough to link to the answer! It’s easy to guess from here how other teams used brilliant tactics like this to score points.

Finally, it was all smiles for Lavanya, Apoorva and Janani from second year Genetic Engineering who triumphed winning themselves Rs.3000 and gift coupons’ to college students’ most favourite hangouts like McDonalds, Domino’s pizza, Baskin Robbins,  Barista, Emo and many more! “The competition was intense, but we enjoyed every bit of it. We had practiced earlier and that totally paid off!” exclaimed an excited Lavanya, after the results were announced.  “I was really glad with the turn out for the event, despite it being a vocabulary competition”, said Shyama, the event coordinator.

For those of you having a blast out there participating and watching all these fun events of Milan ’11, cheers! And for those of you who missed it, no need to worry, because we are here to fill you in on everything that happens, so that no one misses out on “Celebrating Life”!

Lying is the best policy.

 By Sanghamitra

In today’s era, lying undoubtedly has become one of the survival strategies and the event Bluffmaster was all about how well you excel in it. And if any of the SRM youngsters were lagging behind, this event has definitely taught them how well to bluff and fool others and at the same time be skeptical.

 The game had a prelim round with 60 participants of which the top 8 scorers were selected. The participants were given a list of questions in the prelims round and they had to choose the answers. The twist was, all the given options were correct and they had to choose the ‘rarest’ answer and not the common one. The rarer the answer was higher the score would be. Organised by the X-factor domain the event turned up to be another great successful event of Milan.“The questions were fun but we had a serious brain storming session”, says Sneha a student of aerospace. Vibhore, a participant says the questions were easy but the answers were very confusing “.  Yes, Vibhore is right, for instance one question was what does one do after waking up? The most common answer was brushing obviously but the rare answer which got the highest point was ‘sleep again’. The unique part of the game was the answers were based on a public survey conducted in java green and hostels.

 “The game is a very strategic one and it’s all about manipulating yourself”, says Mayank the co-ordinator. The best part of the game was at the end of every level the participants could vote out the suspected bluffmaster and this eventually changed the whole scenario of the game. Apoorv the second runner up says it was the best event he came across and the tuff competition  almost gave him goose bumps during the peak of the game. But, Mercillina Deane, a Food Proccesing and Engineering student  skillfully bluffed and beated everyone,and at the end of the game received an amount of Rs5800.

Shreya Goshal- An Evening the Songstress

By Sooraj Rajmohan Shruti Pillai

A crescent moon offset the flashing and pulsating lights on stage as SRMites and even some visitors from other colleges packed the main ground in front of the T.P Ganesan auditorium to witness the singing brilliance personified in the form of Shreya Ghoshal herself.

Despite a rather delayed arrival, the singer did not disappoint her enthusiastic supporters, launching straight into ‘Kaise Mujhe’ from Ghajini, to thunderous applause. After that, it was pure bliss for everyone around for the next two hours, as she went from song to song, mixing melodies and faster numbers, and even providing her South Indian fans with some Tamil and Telugu numbers.

Among the other songs that were rendered by her were ‘Barso Re’ from the movie ‘Guru’, ‘O Bekhabar’ from ‘Action Replayy’, ‘Yeh Ishq’ from ‘Jab We Met’.  Keeping everyone’s interest going with lots of interaction, she even cheekily dedicated ‘Cheeni Kum’ to all the professors of the college.  

The only blemish in the whole programme came when one of her supporting musicians was injured by a stone thrown by one of the spectators. However, after requesting the crowd to maintain discipline, she continued in her lighthearted manner much to the joy of everyone present.

Another fun fact about the fabulous show was that the it also served as a birthday celebration for Shreya Ghoshal, and judging by the way she was gushing with compliments for the SRM audience, it is unlikely to be one she will forget in a hurry!