Republic day celebrations:Team MNP

Growing up listening to stories of early India and sitting through history classes learning about our freedom struggle has built up an underlying patriotism and love for our country. Somewhere along the line, we as millennials tend to unconsciously diminish this feeling amidst a rat race. A rather appropriate chance the MNP team including CCS and WCP got to bring out the patriots within us, was the “Musical Blast from India’s Past” event held on 25^th January. What started out as just an active participation eventually turned out to be one of the most memorable and cherished experience for all of us.

It began with deciding a relevant and inspirational portrayal of India’s early struggle; which after a considerable amount of contemplation came down to Rani Chennamma of Karnataka, one of the earliest queens to fight against the British rule. The next challenge was to compose an original song during which we discovered a new-found respect for music directors and lyricists out there. Following a lot of so-called Beethovan moments, out-of-box brain storming and theatrical ideas, we created a short enactment showcasing a timeline of India’s strive for freedom, up to the creation of our very own constitution. As a team we decided to polish our collective sense of creativity by making all our props from scratch including swords, shields, guns, scrolls, the constitution book and even the British uniforms.

The days leading to the 25^th were packed with a series of post-5 pm art work, round table and singing sessions (few hilariously off-pitch instances), hunt for the right Rani, B.R Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru and so on, practice sessions with couple of failed attempts at maintaining straight faces alongside obvious goof-ups, inner jokes and laughter; in simple words: PURE FUN !

When it came to the “big” day, we surprised ourselves as we pulled off a performance beyond our expectations. More importantly we came to realize that having each and every person including the manager, QAs and curators be an integral part of the whole experience had unknowingly brought us so much closer as a team. The day ended with posing, photos and a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment enabling all of us reminisce and take back a bit from it.