PresenTing the Past of the Future

from the Pragyan Diaries.

10th february 2009

2 days to D-Day

I’m not gonna lie about this.

Pragyan’s not really my scene.

Has never been.

I know that it is probably the most tactically idiotic thing for the publicity head to say and I can see the rest of the Core Team giving me the evil eye and not-so-secretly plotting a diabolical scheme for my accidental death…. After Pragyan’s over of course… I’m needed till then.

The story of being Core team member, handling three very unwieldy teams over the past 6 months has run the standard course organizing of every other fest…

Camping in Octa.. sleepless nights .. missed classes.. caffeine abuse.. liberal verbal abuse.. a zillion deadlines whooshing by.. the dreaded final countdown..

Yeah yeah .. we’ve heard it all…

By the time you see four editions of a techfest, things look pretty jaded.

So why do it at all?

Some strange primeval schoolkid-like desire for tacky-looking certificates that do nothing but collect dust in a forgotten folder in a carton on the loft?

A pathological yearning to be verbally abused by random seniors on a power trip?

cuz that guy and that guy ..aaand that guy are doing it ??

sheer unadulterated boredom???

I don’t know the answers to this. But I do know that no matter what my twisted, half formed motivations were to begin with.. they’ve led me somewhere I did not expect to land.

Through the million curses and doubts and the bone-numbing exhaustion I can proudly say that I survived.

We survived.

That’s all I need to say. I don’t need to talk about what an unprecedented success this year’s Pragyan was… I don’t need to talk about the precious precious team that made this happen by working through every painful obstacle and miles of tangled red tape. Because it doesnt need to be said.

For in the end I realised… The question was never about capability. It was about choice. And once we made that choice… there was just no stopping us.