The Whole Shambolic Regatta Experience

If you are a COEP student, then the whole year is treated as a culmination to the regatta. A supposedly breath-taking experience involving adroitly manouvered boats, amazingly choreographed sequences and the grand display of gaiety and fireworks. Unfortunately, due to this incident, last year's regatta was cancelled and students from my batch had to spend two years in the aforementioned state of pent-up exaltation.

So when, the day finally came, I managed to wake myself up from stock-piled apathy towards the entire cultural scene in college to attend the show. Now, there are two ways how an event can be bad - either it is badly organized or the actual content is bad. To take an example from my wide range of hobbies (read quizzing, quizzing umm...) a nice big B-School quiz is mostly well organized, ( read nice AC hall, smiling pretty chicks and personal i-cards) but with a QM with an amazing sense of humour, esp. when it comes to joking about facts. On the other hand, there are quizzes that we enthusiastic college kids, and just-out-of college kids do, which have an excellent quality of questions(note the bragging) without the precise adjustment of parameters for ensuring good organization.(read NO pretty smiling chicks)

These events ranks accordingly as far as I am concerned :
1. Events with good content and good organization. (Pretty Chicks with an ugly QM)
2. Events with good content, not-so-hot organization.(ugly QM, ugly chicks)
3. Events with bad content, hot organization. ( hot chicks, vivacious i-lie-through-my-teeth QM)
4. Bad content, bad organization.

As far as the regatta was concerned, (commencing checklist)
Hot chicks - you kiddin' ? | Start on time - ya right? | Nice comfy seating - business class ! | Interesting - another-sarcastic-answer

Thereby it being classified under section IV - Bad Content / Bad Organization.

In short, a lot of crap happened. However I will use the 'telematches' section to demonstrate how apallingly shoddy the whole thing was.

In the annual regatta there is a particular section called as 'Telematches' - or fights in boats. Dunno as to how it happens every year, but this year there were two groups of boats - one lighted in green and the other in orange. (note to self - verify India's national colour) Then the commentator proceeds to explain the history of the subcontinent as it is subtly depicted by the movement of 12 crassly made naval formations.

This is 'la vérité absolue' according to the COEP boat club. :

1. If India wanted it could have easily rolled over the entire Pakistani army during the '47 war, but " for the principle of peace and love and taking pity upon the Pakistani people" she signed a peace treaty and asked her army to retreat.

2. Soldiers of the Pakistani army carried out the IC-814 hijacking and Indian commandos "putting their lives on the line" rescued the hapless passengers on board.

Pls. to note that in all the above events, the respective conflicts were extremely well depicted, in the clearest gory details - using diwali-rockets held at an intial angle of 20° in the assailants hands. However the administration is the least bit worried about possible accidents, while dealing with horizontally fired fire-crackers - the have suitably equipped each participant with a life jacket.

What ensued was even shittier, with the commentator tearing out a few pages from the original quatrainman's diary, predicting the reunion of India and Pakistan( along with sudden praise of India's accepting and foregiving nature) , and an ensuing nuclear battle with China. Fortunately keeping in mind Mr. Bush's visit to India, the whole topic of America did not arrive at all.

One must remember the situation of the observer, who is by now quite bemused and tired, after being crammed on a rickety old wooden plank, with hordes of students chanting - 'Pakistan chya aaiichaa ..... ' (read rude non-translatable phrases in Marathi) . Jubiliant applause follows once the multi-lighted cast and crew of the Anil Sharma flick take their bows (pun intended, note-to-self: is it necessary to say even if it is intended) every rocket trying its hand at boat burning.

As so, I decided that enough was enough, and came home. Procrastinated for a few days. Then, I wrote this.(note-to-self : need to work on endings)