Best Chennai footprints ever!

The Ruhi Jhunjunwala-led Footprints 2008 team of the Chennai Chapter has every reason to celebrate. Namma Chennai hadn’t seen torrential rains in a week that entailed intense preparations by the team. Everyone had just returned from the final farewell team Chennai dinner (paid for by Miss Ruhi) and yes, everyone now knows that Footprints 2008, the Chennai Chapter has been declared the highest scoring team as yet. (now sharing it with Kol)

Muhahahahahhaha!!!!! Yes, that about summarises the way we feel about it right now. To explain further let’s give you an account of what happened on D-Day.

Did we start late? Yes. Pulled in a fairly decent crowd (read packed auditorium, atleast for the first session)? Yes again. How were the speakers? Okay, considering Aishwarya Subramanian managed to pull in the Editor-in-Chief of the Hindu (Mr. N. Ram, who was in too much of a hurry to listen to Arindam and Aishwarya Sridharan’s beautifully written introduction), Mr Vincent D’Souza(Editor of the Neighbourhood Times) and Mr. Kiruba Shankar (‘Oh Shit!!!!’, because that’s exactly what Arindam said over the mike when he, in a momentary lapse of memory, forgot Mr. Shankar’s name, and had to be reminded of the same by Mr. Shankar himself). Quickly recovered from the initial shock of such blunders, The team confidently faced the audience as the Director introduced them .

When asked whether anything could have been pulled off better, Ms. Jhunjunwala, coolness personified, replied that it would have been nice had she remembered to give the Thank You speech. Of course, we did get Ms. Jhujhunwala’s rather terse comments about people management early on, as we struggled to get the show back on track after the unforeseen delay and the strange disappearance of the Sound Guy (who incidentally was in charge of the lights as well). The 5 minute long confusion that resulted due to the cancellation of a candlelight vigil for the victims of terror due to shortage of time, was reflected in the stage and audience lights randomly going off, and coming back again at the wrong times(when the videos were being played), attended to swiftly by Renuka, Srinivas, Shilpa and Arindam. While the rather excited and typically Indian crowd (precisely 34 mins late for the start of a session) was managed with extreme restraint by Archana & Akanksha, Hamsini, Deepika and Nishant mingled with the audience, handing the mikes around to students who once outside the classrooms, discovered that they could ask a lot of intelligent questions which the speakers were more than happy to answer. Sneha, Siddharth handled the photography exhibition which was subsequently judged by Mr.Sunder who unfortunately couldn’t make it for the prize distribution.

Meanwhile,Arindam,Renuka,Ruhi,Aishwarya Sridharan were undergoing deep stress related issues and not infrequent attacks of paranoia with people or circumstances signalling a change in the schedule and flow every five minutes.

The JWT workshop on advertising by Shiv Parameswaran and Arjun Kumar was a roaring success with the audience completely engrossed in the advertisements and the videos being screened by them. But the main attraction of the workshop was the Sulekha.com inspired yellow pages tearing session by the members of the audience, leaving Venky and Arindam a substantial mess to clear up.

The lunch break wasn’t exactly a successful one as the crowd thinned out minute by minute, though all this was reason for good cheer to the food stall owners put up right beside the auditorium. One of the main panellists of the Evolution of Tamil cinema session slipped through the welcome party, unnoticed much to the consternation of deepika.Ms.Swarnamalya’s arrival created quite the flutter as more of the boys from loyola rushed to attend this session.Venky and Sneha,anchors for the session, gave a wonderful introduction, which was quickly taken over by Mr.Anupam Siddartha,our Deputy Director.As the ratter progressed with a panel discussion,Mr.Gautham Menon and Ms.Swarnamalya argued over the increasingly important role of women in Tamil Cinema. Whether it was for the sheer popularity of it all or not, the fact that we managed to maintain atleast three fourths of the auditorium was something that we were all proud of. The secrets of doing so shall remain with the team to be passed on to the coming batches of SIMC.

Anita Udeep, Film maker and Naresh Iyer, singer were awarded the Young Communicator awards) though they were initially mentioned as the Young Innovator Awardees by Venky, who corrected his mistake 5 secs later.

Amit Singh and our very own Venky,Partners at ASAP,a theatre group, conducted a theatre workshop involving the whole crowd ensured a sizeable number of people staying back till the final session. The session marked the end of our show as the usual thing started happening; crowds leaving as their filmstars had just left and the general, nonsensical milling around of crowds that often plagues Footprints around the Country.

This was how the Footprints 2008 Chennai Chapter team saw Friday the 5^th of December. Sleepless nights, tonnes of worry, justifiably paranoid Ruhi, last minute cancellations and all other such crises that most of us have experienced in the due course of conducting footprints caused much panic. But the interesting thing about FP08 Chennai was that the team always worked together, even under the garb of utter chaos. With randomly dimming lights, breaking mementoes, impatient speakers, emergency creatives et al, we held a show that had the maximum audience recorded in any of the other cities except Kolkata. Our speakers’ composition was the best the City and indeed, Footprints could afford. Our grades are high, our morales upbeat. Because even under the shadow of a super cyclone or the largest global financial crises since the Great Depression, team Chennai pulled it all off.

In short, we created History.

I have arrived...

Madras has always beckoned. With a long delayed arrival, I finally felt the sweat trickling down my forehead. It was a sign of the times that Im sure are to follow- the really tought task of catching up with my team and (damn it0 i have to use a cliche here) leaving my %$^%^print.
Nevermind the fact that I landed up here knowing not where I'd stay, considering the person in obvious reference was amusing himself with the ways of little known tribals near the town of Tirunelveli. Nevermind the fact that I landed up here with 4 days to go for footprints. Nevermind the fact that I had NO CLUE about what was going on. Quite simply, nevermind. I realised that tonnes needed to be done and that all the wacko meetings over the last few months were finally boiling down to these four days.
Footprints is almost here, with all the expectations you can possibly have. Quite honestly, it is the one forum where all they are essentially trying to convey is the need for us to talk. And how.
These four days will be a test. At a time when the country burns, fuelled by its own problems, we will be faced with a barrage of cancelled commitments, delays, agony and at times, desperation. But SIMC, for all its accolades and detractions alike, teaches you two things: set- backs arent what they seem and things will always take a turn for the better. Rather, we'll ensure it happens that way.