Tonight was the tathva '08 cultural night (and yesterday was musical night or maybe vice versa but i don't know for sure and it doesn't matter at all because there is basically no difference between these two concepts at NITC, atleast no tangible one!).
It's been raining lately in here, seems like kind of tryin to make up for all the rain that didn't happen when it was supposed to! So it's been pouring and spoiling evrybody's moods here. Like, so much that day I of tathva, many of the stalls couldn't be put up.
So anyway, chuck that and let's come back to this cultural night I'm talking about. It was at the OAT, of course and I have already talked about it here. So enter like 90 min late, and its like pouring just the way it has been all of tathva. And everyone's seated under umbrellas; I can't come up with a good description of exactly what it was like, but basically, it was a tale of broken umbrellas and wet asses!
Since I wanted neither, we just stood there for sometime (the cultural night had been renamed rain dance @ NITC by then! ;) ), trying to appreciate the music, but sometimes it's really difficult to appreciate things you can't understand at all (I'm referring to malayalam music and us being a long way from it even after more than a year here).
So we set this deadline sort of a thing, 'we'll try just three more songs and if it doesn't get better, we're outta here'. After two songs I was only too glad to be leaving soon but out of nowhere, the third song turned out to be one of my friends' favorites and, to my utter dismay, we were staying.
However slowly the music somehow got better and we have this theory: because we don't understand most of the music and yet we can't afford to get bored there, so whatever the music is, we just dance, for our own entertainment!! So we did just that, and then there was some good music too and ultimately, there finally was a musical night I enjoyed, like truly enjoyed...

Musical Nite @ NITC is a phenomenon by itself. So after one year at NITC, I'm gonna point out some salient features of this 'thing' thst happens at certain intervals!
Its held at OAT aka Open Air Theatre. Till before we'd been there, from the description our seniors gave, we'd really wonder what that bloody place would be like. After our first visit, we knew atleast it wasn't bloody! Hey just kidding! Its actually nice, and the best part is that its ours, it belongs to 'us'!
Its actually a terror ground for freshers. My first visit, my seniors made me sit with my back to the stage - though i'm sure they didn't do that deliberately! - but I was too terrified to point that out to them!
Another phenomenon you'll be introduced to at NITC is the 'fish pond'. Either its really called that or it just sounds like that to me! So this 'fish pond'thing is basically the dedication counter where i think you gotta pay too. Its supposed to be a fun thing but I've seen quite a few people fretting over the dedications they recieve!!

My own fish pond story is quite sad. Everytime I've recieve a dedication, the guy'd come running to apologize and say that his friend or senior sent that!
Poor me! I'm yet to recieve a dedication 'straight form the heart'!!
Musical nite obviously means there's gonna be music, which sorta hints there'll be dance too, right? So dance there is, but that's not all. For its NITC and its OAT, even the heavens agree its got to be special. So everytime there's a musical nite, and there's music and there's dance, there's rain! And then the red color from the OAT stands comes off and spoils all our dresses!!
Then comes the most interesting part, because this is totally from my own observation: there are two kinds, better say, categories of people at 'musical nite'. One category is people like me, who go with their friends, groups of girls or guys or maybe both, who go there to chat, dance and basically chill out! The other category of people turn up for their sweethearts! They sit side by side, talking into each other's ears - I don't know if they can really hear each other through all that noise and the rest of us jumping and dancing around them or if they just pretend to be able to, to us and to each other! Some of them appear really sweet but they are a class of their own, and I'm sorry if I hurt anyone by this interpretation of mine but I find it real funny! I'm just rude enough to admit it - I find them hell funny! But you know what? Everyone else thinks this way too, I'm only too blunt to admit it!
The last thing I'd like to say about 'musical nite' is that there's yet to be one I thoroughly enjoyed or where I thought the music was nice, if not all that nice! My apologies to all offended, once again - I realise it takes a lot to put up a 'musical nite' but this is what I feel!