COLLEGE ENTERTAINMENT

A comment on cultural programmes by college students


During my student days in college the entertainment put up on College Days and other functions were highly original and innovative.


Original skits

The skits were based either on the prescribed literary texts or on current events. There was a hilarious spoof of Antony's oration (Julius Caesar). One delivered the speech, and the other translated it in Tamil most inappropriately. "Friends (Nanbargale), Romans (Romargale - the interpreter touched his hair while saying this), Countrymen (Pattikkaataangale)". "Ambitious" became Ambipayal and so on. The crowd was reduced to helpless laughter.


Such skits continued to be put up till just a few years ago. One student, Muthuswamy, did a very funny little play about the Chinese invasion when the papers were full of news about it. Some swamijis in the Himalayas encounter a few Chinese soldiers and engage them in conversation. They used sign language but spoke several asides to the audience in Tamil. It was great fun.


Haroon Mohamed and Anil Kumar Bhandari put up hilarious skits and they were experts in ad-libbing. Once when an open air performance was going on, a plane flew overhead. And quick as a flash Haroon Mohamed said, "The arms have arrived. Fidel Castroil has kept his promise."


Original Music

Students displayed their creativity also in composing their own songs. One student, Rajasekhar, made up and sang a song that went "Varadakshanai vendaam, Vasanthaave Poadhum" which was a smash hit with the audience. It was requested time and again in subsequent years.
They also had cricket commentaries. One player wields a broom and walks to the end of the stage. "He has swept the ball to the boundary" says the commentator.
Another student, Vivekanandan, did a very funny take-off on the famous musical group, `ABBA'. He called his group `AMMA', that produced `music' by making sounds with the mouth.


These were all kitchen sounds like grinding, pounding, boiling, frying and so on, but nevertheless having a semblance of harmony. Vivekanandan put up several such skits during his three years of study.
He later shortened his name to Vivek and became a successful film comedian.
I must say that his film routines were never as inventive as the items he did in college.


Decline of Originality

Today college entertainment consists mostly of dancing to some film song played on some audio equipment. Those days such dancing was contemptuously referred to as "record dance" and confined to exhibition venues.


Recently a couple of girls came to invite my wife to be a judge of a dance contest in their college. The event was called `Footloose'. When she came back after the contest, I asked her how it was. She said the recorded music was too loud, and the movements of the dancers a little vulgar.


The two girls came back the next day on a visit. I asked them why they had made such a din and thrown their limbs about in gay abandon. "That was nothing" said one of the girls. "After Aunty left we pushed the volume to the peak, and made the movements much faster and naughtier". "Then you should call the programme `Nutloose', not `Footloose'" I said.


That seems to be appropriate for many of the youth programmes of today.




J. VASANTHAN
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