Saturday, October 4, 2008

The magic of creation

Vista is the effort of hundreds of coordinators and volunteers getting their hands dirty. And it's not always that things are like a walk in the park. But working around hurdles is what makes it all so endearing.

Here's what Tony has to say about his volunteering experiences hitherto:

Having been out of college for long 8 years, I had forgotten what it feels like to be in the midst of a college festival! .. And now at IIMB, I have once again found out what it takes to the create the magic and when the magic is at the scale of Vista, the effect is indeed surreal.

Last week, as I walked to the class, across the majestic corridors of IIMB, I used to wonder who creates these wonderful graffiti, - collages, posters, banners – splattered against the awe inspiring stone walls of the campus and what would have gone into making stuff like this happen. And then I joined the internal publicity team and got the first hand experience of it. The first night, Gazal mailed me saying we will meet at the mess after the “Networth Talk”. The networth talk was supposed to end at 12:00 and me being the sleepy guy, decided that I will set an alarm to wake up at 12:00 and join the team. The alarm never went off unfortunately, I ended up waking up at 3:00, rushing to the mess and seeing collages around me . Aah, I had missed being part of the fun. The next night, I made it a point to tell 3 people to call me, so that I do not miss out.

The work started with Gazal, our lead creationist, explaining what needs to be done. You need to cut out thermocol sheets, paste it on acrylic sheets and recreate the vista logo.. it sounded so simple J. Well first we need to get the thermocol sheets from the infra room and the folks who had gone to collect it called up to say the lock could not be opened with that key. Nobody knew what went wrong but we had to finally get the lock broken in the middle of the night :( Murphy was sure around to play spoil sport.

Cutting out the thermocol sheets was not an easy task as it sounded at first, but with many experts in our midst, we got quickly trained and etched out the vista logo. Now, it was time to learn painting with water colours, my hands acquired the wonderful hues of vista in a matter of hours but I had acquired a new skill- To paint on thermocol where the paint tries to run away from the surface. Putting together the logo on the acrylic sheet , we set that against the rocky walls. Wow .. the vista logo looked so much more wonderful after we created it once again with our hands :)

Now it was turn to create the “vista cube” to showcase the daily updates .. all of us had got trained sufficiently in painting and got to the task quickly. It was a time of great fun with each one calling out how perfect his colour stood out on the board until the Bangalore weather played spoil sport .. torrential rains at 3:30 AM in the morning .. Aaah .. we had to run and take cover taking all the material and soon Yagnesh’s bed got converted into the vista storage. The rains showed no intention of stopping and we finally decided to call it a day and continue the next night.. It sure was Mr Murphy’s day. Wonder where Yagnesh slept yesterday with all the material spread across his bed and room .. And now I am awaiting night fall to start work again.. I want the cube up ASAP and see our creation in all glory.

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