JAM was my bread and butter!
There was a time ... when college fests were about the events ... more specifically about the Lit and Cultural fests. There was competition then ... fair and strong! That time has gone now. I am standing by and watching as college fests which used to breed the cream of the creative folk around here deteriorate beyond redemption!


I was a very very active part of the college fest scene during my engineering days and have travelled alone at times out of the city to places like Tumkur etc to take part in fests and for the competitions that were so essential to my existence then. The money got from winning din't really justify the effort at times, but it was not so much for the money that we participated. We participated knowing that it would be good competition and that we would really love it!

Over a period of time, PESIT had a select few who would not bother about costs and effort and just travel and attend every single fest and take part in as many competitions as humanly possible. This group included Phenom, Full Dhool (our mad ads team) and a few others who accompanied us depending on the fest and the event. Between us, we had most of the Lit and Cultural events covered. This even included a maiden hindi music / Indian light music competition effort with a group song, a solo, a duet and an instrumental by the Mad Ads team with me and my brother who was not even in my college! And also the most famous Hindi Antakshari competition where we had people copying off our answer sheets in the prelims while we knew just one hindi song at that time!

Some of these fests have become an event in our calendars that we would not miss for anything in the world. Some of the trips that we made for these fests have more or less shaped how we turned out eventually! The friends made during these fests and the little rivalries that we had coudn't be traded for anything at all in this world!

But all that has changed now ... over the past 2-3 years, the focus has shifted out of Literary and Cultural events to the more glamour oriented events ... Fashion Shows and Model Hunts and Mock Rock (where participants imitate with attempted humour some of the music videos or rock acts) and such events define the fests of today. Everything else takes a back seat.

Many wonderful Lit events have been phased out. There is no elocution in fests anymore, no creative writing, no poetry, no whats the good word ... previously, we used to have ateast 3 debates / speaking events of that kind at a fest (The English Debate, Turn Coat, Extempore Speaking atleast) and then JAM, Whats the good word, Dumb Charades, Parlimentary Debate, Creative writing (with one topic on each day of the fest), about 5 varieties of quizzes, 20 Questions, AirCrash, Informal events which had tons of quizzes and crosswords etc ... there must be tons more that I do not remember right now. I remember at some point or the other in my student life taking part in each and every single one of these events ...

Todays fests have one Debate ... for the sake of a debate where there are about 5-7 participants, a JAM, again with about 7-8 participants, most written events cancelled etc ...

I was recently asked to come for the St. Joseph's Commerce College Fest to judge Aircrash and I was told eventually that the event was cancelled because only 2 participants turned up. I have conducted JAM at different fests where there was no need for a prelimnary round because there were only 6 participants. The level of competition in each of these events I've been asked to judge is quite bad too!

At the recent Christ College fest 'In-Bloom '05', JAM had 6 people who had registered for the event ... 5 of them were from Christ College, and on that day ... only one of the 5 turned up and the event was cancelled! In my time, Christ College had a rule saying only 2 people per college allowed for JAM and then there would be over 20 participants and the event would go on for about 4-5 hours and people would go and finish other events in between and come back for the finals etc... I remember this because the JAM finals would always clash with the western music finals and I would have to sacrifice one round of JAM atleast every time!

For a real insight into what I am talking about, you should ask someone who was asked to judge a western electric competition in the recent past at the college level! that would be quite a torture!

I was speaking with a friend of mine who is incharge of conducting the fest at one of Bangalore's premier colleges. He said that they were planning to scrap all Lit events from the next year on ... for the single reason ... NO PARTICIPANTS .... !

Its not that these fests are not lucrative... on the contrary, they are! they pay about 500 rupees on an average per person for winning an event. In some cases much much more also....

The other possible argument to this is that they are all studying or are on some fantastic academic pursuits. But its not like we din't do anything in that regard, far from it! We were compelled to by our universities who have removed student projects from the syllabus now ... that is a whole new post BTW ... I, for one, am not even close to being convinced with that argument!

So what is the reason then that fests have stopped attracting participants for Literary events ? Is generation X++ even interested ? or will we just have a walking talking MTV generation on our streets and nothing more ?