KMIT Diwas started off with a bang! (A pop, to be precise. Party poppers. And also, a very yummy chocolate cake.) The principal, Mr. Maheshwar Dutta and the director S Nitin addressed the gathering, declaring the event open. The campus was beautifully decorated. The theme incorporated by the decoration team was ‘best-out-of-waste’, so, there were strings of bottles and paper cups and newspaper chandeliers hung up all over the campus.
The first event was the quiz competition held in the auditorium. The organisers had conducted the prelims prior to the event and had shortlisted four teams. The Quiz master for the event was Mr. Riyaz Khan, an ex Indian army official. There were a total of five rounds- the open questions round, the audio questions round, the picture questions round, the video questions round and finally, the rapid fire round. The competition was intense but Team Achyuth and Pratyaksh took a 10 point lead over Team Suman and Sameeksha barely winning the competition. The time and effort that the organisers put into it felt really worthwhile and it would have definitely felt good being able to put a smile on everyone’s face.
The next event that continued this festive spirit was the mono-acting, in which student participants were given three interesting themes to choose from and enact. The students gave exciting performances, some funny, some with a message, some just spectacular. But the stars of this event were definitely the two faculty performances. Mr. Sudheer Kulkarni from the accounts department gave us all a splendid message about the importance of wearing a helmet and Mr. Pavan Kumar Patil stole the spotlight with an extremely brilliant re-enacting of a scene from a Telugu film that belonged to the golden era.
Simultaneous to the events running in the auditorium, the ground had races for the students and faculty.
The bout of the three races started off with a game of a casual round of tug-of- war for the faculty. It proved to be more engaging than all the three races put together! The hot, overbearing sun and the brittle, sand; nothing could possibly have dampened their spirits. Led by Abhishek sir and Deepa ma’am, they went into it with a zestful animatedness, their cheerful banter and playful shouts fodder for the spectator’s enthusiasm. Then we had the gunny sack race, the three legged race and the lemon and spoon, in order of succession. The three legged race turned out to be the most popular one, with literally hundreds of people queuing behind to take part in it.
Apart from these, the organising team had also conducted musical chairs for the faculty. It was a tremendous hit with them as we noticed that there were more people coming in and queuing up for the next round of the musical chairs. And dare we say, the faculty does know how to have fun!
Zooming out from the action on the ground, we had product launch and essay writing in the FS labs.
Product Launch is an event where either an individual or a team launches, i.e. gives a presentation on, a product. The event was scheduled to begin at 11:00 AM in the ELCS Lab of the First Year Block. At 11:00, people started to come. All of a sudden, the room went from almost empty to almost full. Albeit an individual could have participated in the Product Launch, in our case, we only had teams. A total of seven teams were participating in our event, which was quite ideal for the given 1 hour time slot. As scheduled, the event began at 11:00 AM. The event started off with a warm welcome message to the judges, participants and audience. After that, the teams started giving their presentations. After each team had given their presentation, they had to clear the queries the audience and the judges had, regarding their product. Once that was done, they were awarded points for their presentation. This happened with all the seven teams. After all the teams were done and the room was once again empty, we collected the score-sheet from the judges and shutdown all the equipment. Later that day, the top three teams were given cash prizes.
A good deal of students showed up for essay writing and we were quite surprised that the first years were dominating in number. The topic given was “After the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, do you think there should be more restrictions on the usage and ownership of guns?” The event went on for an hour. Albeit the topic was spontaneous, the participants showed their skill and managed to deliver some great essays. For evaluating the papers, we had Mrs. Shakuntala, one of our senior most and experienced English faculty in the college. She stated that few participants have really outperformed and declared the top 3 essays written by Sparsha Akulu, Dhunde Vamshi Krishna and Swathi Guptha.
The winner was awarded with a cash prize of 1500-/ and a certificate and the runners-up received 1000/- and 500/- respectively.
Meanwhile, back at the auditorium, a war of words was being waged. And yes, it was the debate competition. The preliminary round for the debate competition had 20 teams. Controversial yet interesting topics like “Should age be an important factor in a romantic relationship ” , ” Should Facebook as a platform streamline news” etc were given and the teams had valuable points to pitch in. They were evaluated by Mrs. Sharada ma’am. 16 students were selected for the finals based on various evaluation criteria. The final rounds were very intense as all the four teams made a formidable argument. It was great to witness the participants put forth their opinions on topical debates about feminism etc.
The crowd was very much into the debate. As the bell rang, the judges gave their opinions and declared a winning team who, we’re sure, must have provoked thoughts in many minds present in the room. After the intake of all this information from the past hour, it was time to loosen up and have a good time which is exactly what the audience did!
The first act, a comedy sketch by two first year students, left the audience in splits as they could relate completely to their perspective on Indian Parents. This act was followed by a number of stand-up performances which had all kinds of content from slapstick comedy to dark comedy. The response to stand-up comedy was overwhelming as it is still a growing art form in this country. The participants were judged based on content, use of language and timing. The audience enjoyed what the comics had to say as they had chosen the topics which were familiar to everyone.
The organisers ensured that no corner of the campus would be left untouched by the celebrations and so, the canteen was the venue for the doodling competition. from 10:30 am onwards. 30 participants came forward to showcase their doodling skills of which Pavani, Niharika and Chandana impressed the judges with their extraordinary performance and won first, second and third prizes respectively. We appreciate the efforts put in by all the artists, the artworks are displayed in the art gallery of this edition of the e-magazine.
One of the main attractions of KMIT DIWAS was the singing competition. It was quite surprising to find that the college had so many musical talents from a variety of genres. Be it Lalita whose classical singing awed the audience, Nikhilesh whose voice had everyone in a trance or Vinisha who rocked on stage to an upbeat song. And lest we forget! It wasn’t just the students, but also the college staff and faculty who sang their hearts out. Despite the fact that everyone was amazing, a winner had to be chosen and it was none other than Lalita who’s powerful voice had the judges from the get go. It was fantastic seeing such raw talent and diamonds in the rough and we the organizers sincerely hope we get a chance to arrange such a stage for them again.
In the classrooms on the ground floor, vegetable carving and paper lamp making competitions were held. The vegetable carving event was a treat to the eyes. Even though we had less participation, the ones who did participate made all the viewers gasp at the beauty of their craft. Vegetable carving is an art, in which one carves the vegetable and gives it a different desired shape/look, like an animal or flower. The event required the participants to get their own carving tools and vegetables/fruits. They got watermelons, cucumbers, apples, bananas, carrots and shaped them so intricately that everyone was left awestruck. All-in-all it was a wonderful event, that garnered lots of appreciation from students and staff alike, hopefully the next time it’s held, it has more participation.
Similar is the case with the paper lamp making conversation. Though the participation was less, the work turned out to be amazing. Lamps of all shapes, sizes and colours gave the judges a tough time in choosing a winner. But they got off easy since there were three prizes. The students were asked to bring their own materials to work with and they surely did a brilliant job.
The last event for the day and quite obviously so, was the dance competition. The auditorium was full. There were some students sitting on the floor, some students were standing and everybody was cheering. At one point of time, it felt like the cheering of the students was louder than the music. Students registered in huge numbers and the preliminary round was held and a few teams were selected for the 13th. Each participant gave a fantastic performance. For each performance, there were more students pouring into the auditorium and for each performance, the cheering grew louder. But the best performances are the ones that came from our beloved faculty. Who would have thought they would enjoy more than the students did!? There were solo performances and a group performance by the entire faculty of the ECE department. The dance competition definitely proved to be a magnificent conclusion to a beautiful day.
ALL DAY ATTRACTIONS
Food trucks:
In addition to the delicious canteen food made available for the students every day, we had called in food trucks. Special days need special things. The food trucks we had called in were ‘My Cream Chip’ and ‘Le Bistro’. The food was appe-teasing and affordable.
Merchandise stall:
KMIT gets its own merchandise! Yay! Beautifully designed, customised badges, mugs, t-shirts and notebooks were available at reasonable prices for the students and staff to purchase.
Wish tree:
A wish tree was placed near the parking are and tags were provided so people could write down their wishes and hang them up on the tree. At the end of the day, most wished for more events like KMIT Diwas (which is one wish that will definitely come true, no doubting that) and for an open gate system. Not so sure about the latter coming true. Nothing wrong with wishing so, wish away KMIT!
Face/ body art stall:
Initially, it was a face painting stall. It turned into a body art stall with students wanting ‘tattoos’. Very few people got their faces painted. The tattoo section reigned.
Art gallery:
Artists in KMIT are available in abundance, the performance of kmitains in the art event held on 7th October justifies the above fact. Be it drawing or painting, doodling or sketching,Origami or best out of waste all the participants came up with extraordinary ideas and proved that creativity has no bounds.
Seventy masterpieces by all the participants, few posters by the organizers, few artworks contributed by kmitians, a lot of hard work, creative heads having fun and of course loads of tape to keep the art works upright onto the four walls of the room 111,this is all it took to form the art gallery.
The last minute set up of the art gallery, the expressions of people fascinated by the art gallery, the bidding wars between the ones fighting for ownership of the masterpiece they liked the most,all this added more to the overflowing bucket of unforgettable memories.
We had put the artworks on sale,majority of the art works were sold, we gathered amount summing up to Rs 6,307 and we take pride in telling that all the money was contributed to the charity stalls.
The onlookers couldn’t keep their eyes off the walls, sticky notes started to fall off from the already full feedback chart and by the end of the day,empty charts left for the viewers to scribble, were filled with random designs.
Charity:
The charity drive we initiated, started off on the 9th of October and ended on the 13th, the day of KMIT Diwas. We identified three charities, Sphoorti foundation ( an orphanage), Shirdi Sai Old Age Home, and the Humane Society International(an animal welfare organisation). Along with these, we also had an organ donation pledge, powered by JeevanDan, NIMS. By the end of the evening of the 13th, we had collected a whopping 68,000 rupees and 200 organ donation pledges, though tired, we were already screaming and shouting, but the better surprise was to come in later. The management announced that they would round off the money to one lakh rupees! Now, we’re on to distributing the charity and the smiles on people’s faces and the shine in their eyes was worth it. We’d do it for them all over again, anytime.
After the dance event, we had Mr. Tapadia and Mr. Vinay give away the prizes. A few announcements later, the event was officially declared closed and it was time to leave. Content, exhausted and smiling students and faculty started pouring out of the college. KMIT Diwas was a huge success and a great start to the coming years. We hope, wish and pray more events like this take place and more often too. Lastly, belated happy birthday KMIT! And a very very very happy third birthday kMITRA!!
November 29, 2017 at 10:09 PM
More pictures to cover the event to the added please. Atleast one for each event and a collage for several small events.