The Curious Case of Ambi Coording

Post Saarang B**ching Ltd. Presents  

‘The Rust’

Spons team friend: “Yeah, so we got endless supplies of Coke, ‘Overadvertised Biscuit’ (if you haven’t seen at least ONE 6x6 banner or had ONE flyer thrust upon you, you’ve been living under a rock), a few t-shirts, and a coupla other odds and ends.”

Me: “We got free double-sided tape, b**ch. Yeah, that’s right--FREE! DOUBLE sided!”

There is a very well-defined hierarchy when it comes to the organizing committees of Saarang. Imagine a pyramid. There’s the top crowning pointy bit and the bottom bit. Then there’s the stand holding up the bottom bit. We’re, like, the rust on the stand. To clarify: there are two teams; The Rust--that’s the Ambience team, and The Others--that’s, well, the others.

Ambience, if the Saarang cores wake up to flex-printing, can be done away with entirely. But that has not happened yet, and so we have a team comprising of a few lost souls entrusted with the Kafkaesque task of making artsy props/instalments for a 635-acre expanse (okay, the few acres where the fest goes on). Like moles and <insert name of random unglamorous nocturnal creature>, they work away in some (literally--the lighting sucks) shady corner of SAC while the entire machinery of Saarang whirs away, ignorant of their existence. They spend nights over props that they hope (in vain) are at least visible, and mornings washing glitter off their scalps and scraping paint off their toenails (true story. Also, glitter is EVIL). They attend coord meetings and come out wondering what on earth just happened, when, for example, a) cores throw about statements like ‘all right guys, don’t forget to RSVP your ABCD to the ACP, and do the ERP, yeah?’ and all the others nod in unison and b) someone says ‘…and all thanks to NEURO--awesome macha!’ and you turn and ask your co-coord ‘Wait, we have some bloke called Bureau?’. Amidst a volley of ‘clause 6 of the MoU is a bit iffy, eh?’ and ‘yeah, I’ll seal the deal today with <insert name of random super-appealing brand>’, they try to pass off ‘Fevicol won’t work da, use superglue’. At the end of it all, they seek solace in the odd ‘Yeah, that was pretty, that shiny thing in…wait, where was it?’.

Underdogs or what? At the end of yet another amazing Saarang, The Others are left with the bittersweet hangover of a tough job (reasonably) well accomplished, and The Rust is left with enough of black existential humour to fill a Woody Allen film. Sigh.