The Newsletter – 14.09.2019

Felicity: Buzz 2k19

Jaidev Shriram

Cynics say that Felicity enthusiasm is dead but this year’s Felicity buzz would indicate the exact opposite. Over the span of 3 days from 7th to 9th September, the batch of 2k18 organized the event for the freshers, which included PG1 unlike the buzz of 2018. A couple of things were new to this felicity buzz, in contrast to last year especially. 

The website and social media pages for buzz were revived and had a dedicated team which spread word about events. Speaking of revivals, the dance club, which is now called ‘The Dance Crew’ organized a Bollywood dance workshop in Nilgiri with 30+ enthusiastic newcomers and experienced dancers alike. 

Notably, felicity buzz 2019 had a comedy night, a first ever for felicity buzz. This was conducted in collaboration with Bingo Comedy Adda, and a packed H-105 witnessed the comedic genius of Mandar Bhide. Other events included the classic treasure hunt, capture the flag, codecraft, DJ Night, and more. All in all, felicity buzz seemed to be a good start to the year and interest in Felicity among the fresher batch seems to be high as well. When few freshers were asked about buzz and expectations for Felicity, they had this to say:

“Buzz was very hyped. It didn’t seem like a proper fest. I hope Felicity would be better than buzz”

“I loved buzz. I had too much time to sleep. I expect more free time from Felicity.”

“Though the schedule was a little too packed (like events started early morning, and some events overlapped), it was fun. DJ and Comedy night were really fun. Buzz has increased my expectation of the scale of Felicity.”

Club Updates: Upcoming changes with the Clubs Council

Ujwal Narayan

Every year on the Counselling forum, there will be that one question: Can I have a life@iiith which is not just studying or coding. Clubs play an integral part here, and spice up what is an otherwise bland semester with activities catered to your interest. Thus active clubs are essential for a healthy and overall development of an individual. This is where Clubs Council comes in and helps clubs function smoothly and effectively liasoning with the SLC to ensure they have everything they need. 

With the new academic year, the Clubs Council has several exciting things planned. 

Some of the new proposed changes include: 

1. Clubs website: IIIT had websites for clubs several years ago. But due to several factors, it had fallen to disuse. This year however, there are plans underway for each club to have their own website. These websites will include activities planned, images of past events etc and will showcase the club to all. These websites earlier on the intranet will now be open to all.
2. Event Calendar: Have you ever missed an event you really wanted to go to but slept through it or forgot about it later? Here comes the Event Calendar to help you out. This calendar has all the events from all the clubs. This is a one stop solution to all your troubles. The timings of the event, the location, a brief description all available in one easy place. Subscribe to the calendar and stay up to date on all the campus events.

These plans are part of a broader push from the club council to increase the number of events, along with a well defined budget policy for the clubs. Looking back at the past year, club life at IIIT seems to be improving. Just last year, three new clubs were formed – Frivolous Humour, Gaming and the Astronomy clubs. Based on enthusiasm shown in the previous year and by the new UG2k19 batch, it seems that clubs at IIIT might truly stand a chance at a proper revival

Gym Upgrade

Shahbaz Shaik

The college gym. Something that stereotypes suggest, in a college like ours, should be a depressing, rarely visited room in the basement full of old equipment. And although it is a depressing room in the basement, full of old equipment, it certainly is not rarely visited. In fact, on all weekdays, there are atleast 5-7 people at all times in the evening. And now, maybe because of the active participation three more machines have been added to the gym, to the pleasant surprise of the regular gym goers, and to the relief of the older machines in the gym, as a couple of years have been added to their life expectancy. These consist of a machine for exercising the back, a machine for the legs, and an inclined press. These machines take the place of a hazardous leg curl and pec fly machine, that sooner or later would have claimed a life. Hopefully some of the other senior machines still struggling and serving in the gym will be relieved by younger soldiers. Although a few are well maintained, some are maintained extremely poorly, rarely given their required dose of grease or oil. Regardless of whether this is a one time addition or will become a regular thing, it is a pleasant and thoughtful step in the right direction towards making the IIIT gym seem more like a legitimate gym than a front for Heisenberg’s business.

Maveli comes to IIIT! Onam Celebrations

Gautham Venugopal

Seen a lot of people walking around in campus wearing white dhotis? That’s probably because they were celebrating Onam, the annual harvest festival of Kerala. 

Onam is celebrated over 10 days at the beginning of the month of Chingam, the first month of the solar Malayalam calendar (Kollavarsham), which overlaps with august-september on the Gregorian calendar. This year it began on 1st September and ended on 13th September.

Various cultural activities were held by the Malayali fraternity and cultural council between 8th and 10th of September as part of Onam celebrations in IIIT-H. 

On 8th, Lasyamohanam, a dance performance by a renowned mohiniattam dance trio, was held at the amphitheatre in the evening. The event started with a welcome dance by our very own Shajil sir. It was followed by an entrancing 3-part performance lasting 45 mins by the dance trio consisting of Kalamandalam Pooja Rateesh, Kalamandalam Shrithi Shaji, and Kalamandalam Krishna Suresh, who were invited to IIIT from HCU. The themes of the performance was based on famous Malayalam poems.

On the 9th, students pulled an all-nighter to complete the floral carpet in front of KCIS. Floral carpet making, one of the main onam celebrations, started at 7 in the night and ended at 6 in the morning. The workforce involved students both in and outside of the malayalee community. Flowers were bought in bulk and hand cut so that the petals could be used in the carpet. The entire design was meticulously hand drawn over a span of multiple hours, an effort that truly paid off.

On 10th, onam celebrations were hosted at the guest house. Various cultural activities like singing and dancing along with various games were held.Many non-malayalee students also actively participated in the events.

Boys wore traditional dress of shirt and dhoti, while girls wore saree. After that, onam sadya was served.

On behalf of the malayalees in IIIT, the organizers of the event would like to thank all who helped in organizing the various events.

Felicity: Teacher’s Day Celebrations

Rohan Grover

In a first since 2015, Felicity organized celebrations for teachers day. Throughout the day, professors were wished in classes and, a ceremony was held at 5PM in KRB Auditorium in their honour.

This year’s event started with a gratitude speech to thank the teachers’ for their hard work, followed by a music performance (and an encore on the request of the faculty) by students. This was followed by the teachers opening up and sharing their experiences as a teacher and as a student. The played a highly competitive game of pictionary, followed by cake cutting and pictures.

Planned events aside, it’s probably the surprises that students gave for the professors during an otherwise mundane schedule that made the day memorable. The previous day, plans were made across multiple batches and giant banners made to be propped up at an instant during class. Students would then start clapping, gravely confusing the professors initially, and shout happy teachers day

Ping! x LitClub contest results

Staff

We are happy to announce the results of the writing contest co-hosted by Ping! and LitClub. We would like to thank Prof. Harjinder Singh for judging the results.

Winner (tied): “The Monk who Bought a Ferrari” by Mayank Goel
Winner (tied): “My First week in college as ‘Tyler Durden'” by Kadari Ruthwik Reddy
Runners Up: “Something more than love.” by Rohan Lahane

Honourable mentions:
“I AM A WIZARD!” by Tejasvi Chebrolu
Shelved by Anonymous
“Matsya” by Shivansh Subramanian
“Area KCIS: Do you wanna storm?” by (Anonymous)
(Untitled) by Sanchit Arora
“तू चलता रह।” by Himani Bhardwaj
“Blank 22” by Anonymous