Valentine’s Day

“Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey”

Valentine’s Day is that day of the year when suddenly you are bombarded on social media with such ridiculous quotes. Suddenly every person becomes a philosopher and it can get somewhat annoying. But valentine’s day is great. It is the one day in the entire year dedicated to love, that wonder drug that gives you the best high ever; after marijuana of course. But as we know marijuana is actually illegal in our country whereas public display of affection isn’t….. Oh wait #MoralPolice. I’m going to tell you a story I’ve been thinking about today of a long lost love. Valentine’s Day brings back some fond memories…..

So I was deeply in love with this girl a few years ago. She was this amazingly beautiful girl! It was like what they show in the movies; every time I looked at her she took my breath away…. Now that I think about it, it was more like suffocation…. But anyways, things were going pretty great; “were” being the key word. We broke up eventually. It was a mutual understanding. She understood she no longer loved me. I understood she was a bitch. It was a good two years though. At least I count it as two years, I don’t know whether she counts it at all. The reason why I don’t know is because while breaking up, this is exactly what she said, “Rohan, I don’t think it was ever love”. She didn’t say that I no longer love you, she went with “It was never love”! Matlab 2 saal “I love you” bolne ka practice kar rahi thi? This will never happen in any other scenario right? Take college for example. Let’s say your first two years in college go great but you fail a couple of exams in your 5th semester. College will give you a KT for the 5th semester only. It won’t refuse to acknowledge your existence of the past two years because of your mistakes in the 5th semester, right? Or imagine you studying hard for four years the first semester, making it through the remaining 7 and then when you go to collect your degree your college goes like, “Ummm actually… In the last 4 years what we did wasn’t really “engineering”. I was just seeing how good you would’ve been at it. You’re such a sincere student; have the perfect skill set for the course and I’m sure any other college would be so lucky to have you as their student. But….. I’m gonna give the degree to that arts student over there who has 3 KTs but is cute as fuck! Toh tu gaand maraa. Okay bye”. Something as absurd as this is never going to happen!

So we broke up. It was a bad couple of months. You’d think I’d have had my friends for support, but what you forget is I have guy friends. Guys are as good with handling emotional situations as girls are at driving; so not much help there. But time healed it all and guess what? I fell in love again! But around this time I realised I could piss people off in ways I did not know existed! I say this because my ex-girlfriend got angry upon hearing this news. Now, she dumped me. She doesn’t get to be pissed at anything I do. Yet for some reason she got so upset when I started dating her best friend…. Girls can be quite unreasonable at times. But now jealousy creeps in. She has to break us up. She can’t have me dating her best friend. She can’t have that on her CV. So she goes up to her best friend and gives her a list of reasons why she shouldn’t date me. All the reasons were bullshit, but I’ll give her the credit of trying. I still remember the most absurd reason she had given back then. She actually said, “But have you seen the way he walks?”. She could’ve said anything in the world! She could’ve made up things like, “He lies a lot” or “He has foul body odour” or even “He has a small penis!”. None of which is true (for all you judgemental creeps), but they are all possible deal breakers. But she decided to go with my walking habits. Now, I’m no expert on relationships, but, if the biggest problem your girlfriend of two years had with you is the way you walk, you were pretty good at it!

Why did I write about this? Because I needed to write an article for Rotaract Club of Bombay Film City (RCBF) on Valentine’s Day and I was too lazy to come up with new ideas on love so I decided to share with you’ll a story instead? Maybe. Speaking of Rotaract Club of Bombay Film City (see how smooth I am with segues?), they have this amazing project going on called Doordarshan- The Boundless Panorama. Now, since you can’t travel all around the world because you are poor, RCBF has collaborated with a number of clubs around the world wherein each club has filmed their own city from a first person’s view and have submitted their entries. For all you cheap fucks who can’t afford expensive gifts for your girlfriend this Valentine’s Day, here’s the perfect opportunity to show her the world (from the comfort of your bedroom *ahem ahem*). The videos that have already been uploaded are Butwal, Madagascar, Milan, Tetouan Temouda, Kuala Lumpur and Oklahoma. They’re all wonderful videos, don’t miss them. Also, keep an eye out for Manchester, Greece, Washington DC and Egypt, whose videos are yet to be uploaded. Bon voyage!

Rohan Parekh

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Vishaal Aloysius Rasquinha

Education is one of the most important things to give to a child. But let’s face it, school was shitty. Probably I’m saying it because I was one of those sincere nerdy kids in school with a limited social life. Oiled hair, shirt nicely tucked inside shorts makes teachers wet excited, not other girls your age (learnt that the hard way). But apart from that, even the education we receive is for the most part, unnecessary. How the fuck is knowing what that casanova Akbar did back then ever going to affect my life? Teachers who can barely spell “Shakespeare” explaining to us “The author finds the night so dark because of the emptiness in his soul left after his wife left him. This shows the depression in his life.” If Shakespeare were here today he’d probably say, “Bhenchod raat kaali nahi hogi toh kya safed likhu? Ek colour kya de diya koi cheez ko tum log thesis likhna chalu kar dete ho. The night was dark due to the absence of the fucking sun! How difficult is it to fucking grasp that? Your students don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re”. Active passive voice mein problems hai aur tum log soliloquy mein 1000 layers of hidden meanings nikalte ho. This is ridiculous!” (You had to Google “soliloquy”, didn’t you?). People don’t really manage to make a meaningful career from what they learn at school, besides the script writers of Gangs of Wasseypur; because honestly, if there’s one thing school taught us, besides English, was how to swear. And the GoW guys applied that knowledge perfectly. Besides that, who really gives a shit about the birth date of Qutbuddin Aibak? But I met someone recently who also managed to make a career out of something he learnt in school- English! Why do I say that? Scroll down to find out…

Shakespeare: Why did I write all of that?

Vishaal Aloysius Rasquinha was recently at the Waves festival as an emcee during the Lost Stories concert. Ironically, he has been coming to my college, D J Sanghvi, since years now but I had to travel all the way to Goa (not that I’m complaining about the Goa trip) to have a word with him. It turned out to be an awesome interview. Read on.

Tell us about yourself.

I’ve been an anchor for two years. I’ve hosted shows with celebrities like Ayushmann Khurana, Mohit Chauhan, Mika, KK, DJ Chetas, Neha Kakkar, Kanika Kapoor, Yses V (resident DJ of Tomorrowland) and have also done a lot of corporate shows for companies like Vodafone, Airtel and other multinationals.

How did you get into anchoring?

It’s a funny story actually. Back in college we had this event with nobody to host it. My teacher told me, and I quote, “Tujhe English achha aata hai, tu ja” (#ChristianBoyProblems). So yeah, I got to host my first event because “Mujhe English achha aata tha”. This happened in FY BMM. By the time I was done with the three years of BMM, I had hosted all the major festivals in Mumbai, including Mood-I.

How was your IPL experience?

I am the official anchor for Rajasthan Royals. It’s great working with them, I’m almost part of the team. It was a tremendous experience. If you ask what my best memory was, it has to be this- I was in Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad one day prior to a match for a sound check. I stood in the middle of the pitch and said “Check!”. It felt amazing to hear my voice booming from all directions. Next day when I did the same in front of a packed stadium, it was a different level of high altogether! I love these kind of live events as compared to speaking in front of a camera.

Lost Stories concert at Waves

What are you doing with #fame?

Okay so I’m a brand ambassador for #fame; we’re called fame stars. I run a show on it called The Vishaal Show which features celebrities but is also a lot about myself. I’m kind of a narcissist that way. People all across the country and even in other parts of the world watch and enjoy it. The reason I know this is because people from different countries write to me, appreciating my work. It feels really good when that happens.

If not anchoring, what would you be doing?

I have always wanted to be an air force pilot in particular or any part of the Indian Army in general. Back in college I was actually training for the air force, but I failed the medicals because I had flat feet.

Other than anchoring, what else do you do?

I’ve started singing. I’m working on some covers I’ll be uploading to YouTube. (You can check out his first song by clicking here). I am also going to begin teaching underprivileged kids.

Any advice for upcoming emcees?

It is very important to find your own style, don’t imitate someone else. It’s okay to take inspiration from others; see them but don’t be them. I’ve come up in this profession without anyone in my family being in the entertainment business; you can too. Two people who I look up to are Sana Shaikh and Siddharth Kannan, who also happens to call me India’s best youth anchor.

Backstage

Well, I wouldn’t debate on the “best youth anchor tag” because Vishaal surely manages to bring life to whatever event he is hosting. He’s got this amazing persona on stage and most of all he has my respect for making a career out of something he learnt in school! Seriously, school needs to start teaching us stuff that really matters. In the meantime, check out what he had to say about me and this blog.

Rohan Parekh

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Being Indian

YouTube is that magical place on the internet where you can go to see some educational video that’ll help you visualize electromagnetism but 5 hours later find yourself watching with extreme concentration “Top 10 Harlem Shakes of all time“. Nobody on Earth can give an explanation to the psychology behind that 5 hour transition that is better than “you have the attention span of a goldfish and nothing to look forward to in life except for a high speed internet package, so here are some funny cat videos you could LOL at”. YouTube has gained a lot of popularity in the recent past. It is now so mainstream that “you should YouTube it” has become a thing. Very few companies (like Google, Xerox etc.) can boast of it. But lets face it, a lot of the content out there is shit. People with the acting skills of Abhishek Bachchan and video editing skills of whoever the fuck edited the last 15 minutes of Bahubali think they can just create the next internet sensation and that send across fuckloads of crap towards the unsuspecting viewer. Finding genuinely good content online nowadays can be more difficult than finding something sensible said by KRK. But there are some amazing YouTube channels out there as well whose videos I never fail to watch. This dedication sometimes reminded me of how crazy I was about Pokemon once upon a time, never missing any episode on TV. But YouTube surely has the potential to shift an entire generation away from mainstream TV to online content. One of the amazing channels that we have, has got to be Being Indian. No, they didn’t pay me to write this, although I wish they had. Hey Being Indian, if you’re reading this, “Looking for a writer? Do leave me a mail at thecampusbox@gmail.com.” Now that I’m done with the shameless marketing, let’s dive into why I’m writing about them in the first place.

As you’ll know I was recently in Goa attending the Waves festival and I met the team of Being Indian out there. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, so interviewed the team of one of India’s more popular YouTube channels. As with all my interviews, only when I use quotation marks [” “] am I directly quoting someone and the words in brackets () are my own thoughts. Without further ado, let’s see what Sahil Khattar and Ayushman Gupta  (producer at Culture Machine) had to say:

Ayushman Gupta and Sahil Khattar

What got you into YouTube?

Ayushman: Lack of creative expression on television. “TV is fucking stupid. It is made by morons, for morons”. Also, Cinema is very expensive. YouTube was the easiest, cheapest and best way to get our content out there to the maximum possible people.

Sahil: There is absolutely no suppression here, you can shoot whatever you want. If you get something funny, upload it! If you wanna use the word “bhenchod”, use it! There was this video I once saw online where a guy recorded himself farting, added some music and went on to make a whole symphony out of it! It was such an entertaining video, but you can’t do that on TV. As an internet company, you have a lot of flexibility in your daily life. You have flexible work hours, no deadlines in general and it is your final product that matters. Content is the king online. If people like your content, they’ll come back to watch another video; if they don’t, they won’t. It is as simple as that.

Ayushman: Also, the plus point is that with YouTube, your content is always accessible. Bite sized videos can be uploaded as well. You get an idea, vomit out the idea, make a video and move on. Each video is independent of the rest so you are never weighed down by your previous work.

Sahil: There’s a flip side to it as well. Once you upload something, your video is out there forever for anyone and everyone to watch, so it is your responsibility to make sure that you make good videos, because image ka sawaal hai.

How was the channel doing initially? How was the journey to your current 6,00,000+ subscribers?

Sahil: Initially we used to get 7k views a day, now we get 30k. That is a really good figure for a community video channel. Word of mouth was the best publicity we got. This is opposed to a commercial channel like AIB, where they make one video and blast it around everywhere on the internet. It is better to have a loyal community rather than just views.

Ayushman: Marketing brings in just 20% of the views. Sustained engagement with the viewers, responding to feedback and community building is what ultimately helps the channel. There are two approaches you can take towards your viewers while building your channel:

1. “Ma’am, fuck me as many times as you want”
2. “I’ll come and seduce you every Friday”

 

(Kudos to the insanely perfect analogy!)

 

What was the inspiration behind “Every _____ in the World?”

Ayushman: Being Indian talks about cultural identity. I laugh at you, you laugh at me. Every ____ in the world was thoughtfully named keeping this in mind. In fact the first video we did was Every Bengali Mom in the World. Now I’m from Benaras so when my mom saw the video she was like “Fucker you took our case!”, but whatever is portrayed in the video is true. Bengali mothers are really that way so why not make a video on it?

Sahil: People take offence when people laugh at them. It’s a whole different story when people laugh with them. We kept this in mind while making the videos. Humour comes from within. There are so many stereotypes people have in their mind and it is okay to make funny videos of those stereotypes. I’m always calling Ayushman black and he’s always making fun of my baldness. We poke fun at ourselves before others.

 

What are your thoughts on YouTube Red?

Ayushman: I don’t see any problem with it. In fact, vessel already exists with a similar approach to online videos. YouTube Red is great because this way people who can pay money, pay for people who can’t pay. Not literally of course, but with enough paid subscribers, it sustains the channel to give out videos for the free viewers as well. There’s a lot of criticism out there for Red but people need to understand nothing in this world comes for free.

 

What is a typical work day for you?

Sahil: No matter what the call time, Ayushman is half an hour late. I’m another half an hour late because I know nobody is going to be ready anyways. Then we’ll go out on the roads to shoot. In the morning we’ll target colleges and popular hang out places nearby. Then we take a break and do some bakchodi. All the creative fodder often comes from such breaks. Post lunch we hit places where people usually meet to chill, like Carter Road or Bandstand. We end up whiling away a lot of time, only to remember we need to wrap it up before we lose the sunlight. We don’t even have a plan of action all the time. For example, while filming How To Be Friends With Celebrities, we had no script, no ideas of what we’re gonna film. It was a random idea and we went ahead and created an entire video spontaneously. So work is a lot of fun, not the typical 9-5. The company also takes good care of us. Job satisfaction is at its peak.

(I’m so jealous seeing this pic right now)

 

Which are some of your favourite YouTube channels?

Ayushman: Golden Moustache and TVF. I absolutely love TVF and the work they’re doing.

Sahil: Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman.

 

What would you advise upcoming YouTubers?

Ayushman: “The world is a fucking playground”. Nothing that we do is dishonest, same applies to you. Listen to your heart and do stuff that is true to your identity. Create awesome content, views will come automatically.

 

That was the end of an amazing interview. The entire time the atmosphere was so chilled out, as if we were having a normal conversation. I know all my interviews end with a video bite from the interviewee and I was supposed to get one from Being Indian the next morning. But the fucktard that I was, I got drunk and overslept, waking up the next evening! There went my video bite. Koi aur din hi sahi… Go ahead and show them some love by getting onto YouTube and subscribing to their channel. That is, if you manage to reach their channel without getting distracted with this video of babies laughing.

With the team of Being Indian

 

Rohan Parekh

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Lost Stories at Waves 2015

I have been to concerts in the past, but backstage access is still a new thing to me, just like getting into power is new for Lalu Prasad Yadav. RJD has made a massive comeback, as did Maggi. Now the people of Bihar have Dal and Maggi to fill their stomachs (I promise that will be the last pj you have to read). While others were losing their shit over Maggi’s return, I was getting high on weed some amazing EDM music that Rishab Joshi was playing from his DJ console. Standing on stage to see the crowd go crazy to some kickass music gives an adrenaline rush of its own. Vishaal Rasquinha was the emcee. With Vishaal on stage, the energy of the crowd can never die. It felt so surreal. Now I understand why they say “There is no business like show-business”. After the amazing performance, I got a chance to speak with him backstage.

Lost Stories comprises two DJs, Rishab Joshi and Prayag Mehta. Of the two, Rishab had come to Waves this year. BITS seems to be liking him a lot, with the Pilani campus calling him over 6 months ago. When asked where Prayag is, Rishab jokingly said “Probably hung over somewhere”. On that note, we began our interview.

Rishab started off his music career by dropping out of college. He had taken up science in Mithibai college but exactly three days after college started he realised “Ee humse na ho payega” (kudos to the Gangs of Wasseypur reference). He began experimenting with music and became a producer, making around 20 remixes a year. He then switched to DJ-ing to keep the cash flowing. Early on he used to play at nurseries for some quick cash to buy equipment. Not a bad idea I must say.

Rishab met Prayag on Submerge, an online music forum. Rishab was 17 at that time and Prayag, 21. Prayag was already getting recognized, with Tiesto playing his tracks. Tiesto playing Prayag’s tracks really inspired Rishab. They seemed to gel well so decided to form Lost Stories. They released their debut album, “Music For the # Generation” in 2013 which consisted of 10 singles. Rishab said the album was so named because it was referring to this generation who’s attention span is extremely tiny. “How You Like Me Now” became too popular too soon, bringing them to the attention of well-known DJs worldwide. Lost Stories now performs worldwide including music festivals like Tomorrowland.

Since they’re on the road quite often, they’ve started getting someone record their journeys and upload it to their YouTube channel (after heavy editing of course). The video series is quite ‘artistically’ named, “On The Road”. So much for creativity. When asked about his favourite artists, Rishab mentioned DJ Sahil, DJ Chetas and DJ Cashmere. He sees a lot of potential in Sahil, who is just 18 years old. Rishab has been listening to “Instant Crush” by Daft Punk a lot these days. It is his no.1 go-to song while travelling.

When I asked him if he would like to say something to upcoming DJs, his first piece of advice was  “Create your own music.” Playing other people’s music can only take you so much, beyond that you have to show some originality to stand out from the crowd. “Do things that you would want your favourite DJ to do”. Another piece of advice would be to join Lost Stories School of Music which they plan to begin by December, he cheekily added. The school would be accepting a small batch of students but would give them the best quality training to make sure they all become well established DJs in the future.

Check out what he had to say about his set at Waves and this blog:

Rohan Parekh

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AKING’s World Tour- First Gig

Diwali is finally here! The festival of lights, more like the festival of crackers and noise. This is that time of the year when thousands suddenly realize the importance of curbing air pollution……. for a week. These are the same ones smoking cigarettes and hookahs in the comfort of their air conditioned homes the rest of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely fine with it. These are also the same people who suddenly get patriotic on Independence Day and buy their way out of traffic violations the rest of the year. I’m kind of okay with that as well. What I don’t get, is when people use this behavior to justify lighting crackers. How ridiculous an argument can you have? Pollution on other days cannot re-validate pollution during Diwali. That’s like casting Uday Chopra in Dhoom 4 because he has already done the previous films. What is wrong is wrong, irrespective of what has happened already. At least these people are trying to lessen pollution on that day. What is wrong with that? Even Narendra Modi pretends to like L K Advani for a day on the latter’s birthday. Give the man some credit! Pollution isn’t the only thing wrong with our celebrations. Animals are very sensitive to sound. So many cats and dogs cannot bear the cacophony of crackers. Birds fear for their life while flying. Don’t light fireworks for them, if not anything else.

But we’re here to talk about AKING. I met them at Waves, which happened to be the venue of the first gig of their latest international tour. Not only that, Waves managed to get them to judge their rock band competition, Searock finals too. Getting a well-established band to judge an event and begin an international tour from your college festival is one achievement not many colleges can brag about. Shashwat Verma, their pronites head, seems to have done an amazing job this year. Okay so let me give you a brief intro to the band, before we talk about the interview. AKING is a South African melodic rock band based in Bellville, a suburb of Cape Town. Its 4 members are:-

                                   Laudo Liebenberg – vocals, rhythm guitar (2007–present).

Hennie van Halen – bass guitar (2007–present)

                                       Jaco “Snakehead” Venter – drums (2007–present)

                              Andrew Davenport – guitar (2010–present)

I’m not going to write the interview in a Q and A format because that becomes boring and I won’t really get a chance to add my thoughts. My first question obviously had to be how the band was formed and why they decided to name it AKING (originally aKING). It turns out they have been friends since high school. They were bored and needed to do something. They all lived a couple of blocks from the JAM room where they played. It was more of a garage than a JAM room, but it worked. They soon made it a regular thing. Jaco was initially part of another band. He came over for a few jamming sessions and it just seemed to work. So he permanently joined AKING. Andrew replaced Hunter Kennedy on guitar roughly 3 years since the band’s inception. While typing this article I realised I never asked why. Damn! Silly me. AKING, if you’re reading this, please let us know why that happened. You can reach me on my facebook page, The Campus Box, if you’d like (that was a pretty smooth way of promoting the blog, in the blog :p). As far as the name is concerned, there were way too many bands with the prefix “The”. No matter what name they thought of, they’d find some band somewhere in the world using it. Since Elvis Presley was already The King, they decided to go with A KING.

They got their first album, Dutch Courage, in 2008. They were broke at the time and had got a friend to do the recording of it for them. They made the song in a garage, but there was no looking back since. Their single, Against All Odds, really connected with people all around the world. You needed to be at this concert to see the crowd go crazy to it. They make songs that address questions they themselves ask. Honesty, according to them, is key to the music you make. If you are very honest about your emotions while composing, the music will turn out to be beautiful. They also added how they like to keep their songs a little vague. People then come up with interpretations they had never even thought of, but are willing to accept :p

That’s me with the band

Some of their favourite bands are Queens of the Stone Age, Phoenix, Daft Punk and Black Sabbath. Their advice for upcoming bands is to just work extremely hard on your music and play. It is always a better choice to choose a person who you like than someone who may be a little better at playing his instrument. This is because at the end of the day you’ll have to live like family. When you’re spending your maximum waking time with the band, it better have people you enjoy playing with. Take inspiration from others but ultimately strive to find your own sound. That is what will make you stand out from the crowd.

Here’s what they had to say about this blog:

Rohan Parekh

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Waves 2015

If there is one thing engineering students dread more than semester exams or getting placed in TCS, it has to be the submission week in college. File submissions should be as easy and smooth as getting into T-SEC (the college equivalent of TCS; you can’t possibly not get in), but it never is. Procrastination being the main culprit. For all you idiots retards arts grads, procrastination means “delay”, something you’ll did while studying for board exams. Anyways, so we end up doing an entire semester’s work in a few days. It’s just a superpower engineers have, to do shit quickly when deadlines approach. The feeling we experience the day we submit the last file is exactly what Dobby felt when he got his sock. Master gave Dobby a sock. Master gave Dobby clothes! Dobby is a free elf now!

Vivas are equally deadly. Jon Snow knows more than we do during vivas. There’s just one thing going on in my mind when asked questions is ” What the fuck is this?” But let’s not talk about depressing things. My vivas and submissions just got done. Let’s leave that topic and talk about what you’re really waiting for. How the fuck did you get BITS Goa to associate with you? Honestly, I have no clue myself. I guess they don’t know this blog gets 4.5 views a month (the half view being someone who clicked on this post accidentally while searching for a real good quality blog). So that’s that. Whatever the reason is, I got to spend 3 days out there, enjoying their fest, Waves, with the full swag of a sponsor (don’t judge me for use of “swag”).

                                                               BITS Pilani- K K Birla Goa Campus

I had applied to BITS Goa 2 years ago for admission. I lost out due to 15 marks. Now they invited me there. Ironic, huh? They had some really awesome events lined up with their big 3 being Natyanjali (group dance), FlashP (fashion show) and Mr. and Ms. Waves. They were giving Rs. 50k+ to winners of some events. Fucking rich festival, I must say. So what makes this festival so different, besides the fuckloads of money they have? Well, the first thing I noticed was that the different societies in college (music society, literature society etc) were the ones handling the events. Waves, was responsible for the finance, PR and logistics. This is new for me, since I’m used to the festival committee doing it all, but it is a nice concept since it takes away a lot of pressure and workload of the festival committee’s shoulders. This is something I can see many colleges adopting in the future. Secondly, this fest is in Goa! Seriously, who doesn’t like Goa? Besides parents; when their kids want to go there. Suddenly they react as if all that their kid is going to do there is drugs. That is so not true. There’s alcohol as well. Anyways, let me write about my experience of the festival, at least the ones I remember….. when I was sober…. and on campus (only a fraction of my trip satisfied all three criteria).

The accommodation which they provided was great; nothing too lavish but pretty comfortable. No complaints there. They have a lavish 180 acre campus, which sounds great but makes you curse every time you realize the nearest food is a 7 minute walk away. I wonder how the lazy students survive on campus. Maybe I’m not all that sad about losing those 15 marks. People from all across the country were here. I figured I’d participate in a few events as well. I reached the finals of JAM and Show Me The Funny, their stand up comedy event. It turned out to be a great first time experience in stand up. I’m looking forward to doing it more often. Like I said, 2 years ago I wanted to go there for engineering. Now I went there and did stand up comedy. Pretty much the same thing. It was fun interacting with people from all over the country. Searock, their semi-pro band competition was amazing! Waves actually managed to get AKING to judge the finals!!! After all, a Rs. 60,000 cash prize is no joke. Natyanjali saw some fantastic dance performances and FlashP had some hot chicks beautiful women on stage. Jukebox had some professional quality performances. I could go on and on about all their events. Basically, they were all good, but could be just a little better managed.

                                                                Show Me The Funny Finalists

While on campus I heard they had a Lover’s Lane, because there were no streetlights on that road. *wink wink* There is also a Smoker’s Lane, because who is going to walk for 10 minutes all the way till the gate just for one cigarette? Don’t worry BITSians, I won’t reveal the location of your secret spot out here. There also seems to be a very famous “Mark7” on campus who has contributed a lot to the college’s intranet. *ahem ahem* The campus is great overall. They have well furnished classrooms and labs. The interesting thing is that all the buildings on campus, right from the hostels to the academic buildings are interconnected. Students need not step out onto the road at all. This comes handy in the rain, unless you want to make the most of it in lover’s lane :p

This is a festival definitely worth checking out. I got a chance to interview Lost Stories, Vishaal Rasquinha, Being Indian and AKING #SponsorPrivileges. Those articles will be out soon. The Salim-Sulaiman concert they had was a super hit! It truly made students Escape Reality. I’d love to visit this festival in the coming years to see how they evolve. If my submissions get done on time, that is. I’m typing this while suddenly realizing my semester exams begin in less than a week. Oh engineering you bitch!

Check out what the stand up comedy judges had to say about me

Rohan Parekh

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Haalo re Halloween!

The transition from garba (haalo re haalo) to Halloween in the title was smooth as fuck, wasn’t it? Okay maybe I’m not that creative when it comes to giving titles to my articles. But hey, it beats this news channel that decided “Delhi mein facebook ke papa” is a perfectly fine headline to broadcast on national television. Seriously, how high does the editor need to be for him to be like “Aaj kuch toofani karte hai”. But I have to say, whatever drugs he was on, they’ve got to be damn good! On taking a closer look, the news anchor seems to have joined in on the party too, just saying….

So gujarati sunburn ended recently. All the gujjus went ecstatic to spend 9 days with hurting backs, sprained ankles and bruised feet. Garba is no joke for the hardcore players. Whoever said Gujjus are very passive people has clearly not seen a fully dressed gujju on his/her battleground garba playing field. It is a do or die situation in that circle of death. Getting kicked out of the circle constantly because I couldn’t keep up with the steps that were designed to push the body coordination capabilities to its limit with hands here, legs there, genitals flying somewhere, I realised anybody CAN’T dance. Elephant seals fight, peacocks display their feathers and Gujjus play garba. It’s their mating call. Seriously, navratri has gotten the most people laid in India……… after shaadi.com. Seriously, without Navratri we’d just have a bunch of dudes masturbating to, “Taara vina shaam mane, eklu laudu laage….”

We have never had much of a Halloween culture in our country. We don’t celebrate fear, although fear can be a good thing. e.g. Fear of losing all his money is a major factor for a producer to never cast Abhishek Bachchan again. Fear of the law would prevent people from running over people on footpaths. Okay scratch that. There’s no fear if you’re a fucking millionaire with crores of panzies fans supporting you no matter what you do. Anyways, RCBF is organizing a Halloween party today. Do drop in if free. This is going to be my first interaction with the club; let’s see how it goes. Check the details here.

Also, I’ve got a surprise for you guys. Someone in some city of India happened to accidentally come across this blog and liked it. Apparently she liked it so much she invited me to her college festival to write about it. So yes, The Campus Box is in the process of associating with it’s first college festival outside Mumbai!!! Stay tuned tomorrow to see which festival in which city I’m talking about; or don’t. It’s your choice, I’m not going to tell you what to do. But seriously, stay tuned :p

Rohan Parekh

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CarMa 2015!!!

Okaaaaayyyyyyyy it’s been a really long time since I last posted anything. Way too many things were happening. My first rap battle video got uploaded on YouTube! I became the Cultural Secretary of my college! Also I was looking up the legal procedure to have my last name changed to Patel lest the gujarati rockstar Hardik Patel gets his demands fulfilled. #PatelQuota At this rate we might soon have bhai fans lining up to get 49.5% lesser sentences for running over people. At least their drivers will. Speaking of drivers, finally we had one who actually did commit the crime he was accused of, but lets not bother Indrani Mukherjea and her complicated family tree for now. We have an exciting festival coming up, Launchora presents CarMa!! Launchora seems to have paid a lot of money this year considering the fact that my friend Sonali Basu from the marketing team of Carma insisted that I mention them (whoever they are).

The name tempted me to make a joke on how it sounds to a gujarati (car ma= gaadi ma), but I’ll try not to bombard you with pj’s as far as possible. So, the Management Society of T-SEC organises this fest yearly. For those of you who don’t know T-SEC, it’s that college behind National College where there is a different fest every two weeks. Some engineering college I must say! But we all need festivities in life. And these guys get fuckloads a lot of it. I hate the censorship of my posts when I write for festival partners, but kya kare?

Okay so they have this amazing event called “The Amazing Race”. It is exactly like The Amazing Race Asia but with a pea sized budget. I have participated in this event of theirs and I’d say it is the best event they have to offer!

The One Hour Job is a test of how good a salesman you are selling commonplace items. I’d say saleswoman but LOL the girls will be too busy picturing themselves using that item.

Science of Deduction is one event unique to this festival. There are various rounds where you have to crack some amazing puzzles, decipher poems and finally be a detective and solve a murder mystery. Whoever does this event has my respect!

TM-MUN is one of their biggest events that happens at Regus Trade Centre, BKC. They manage to get outstation delegates to participate. Wow.

Quiztacular is a quiz competition and Talkathon is an event on rambling debating. These are 2 of their flagship events; which is why they made their way onto this blog. The incessant insistence of the CarMa marketing team may have had a role in it too. Just saying….

Also, East India Comedy is coming this year to perform their show “Backbenchers”. You better have your passes because they’re already sold out. All proceeds from this show are going entirely to PETA. The last time we had a comedy show for charity it hadn’t gone down quite well. #aibRoast This one should be fine.

So that’s all about CarMa this year. Let’s hope they live upto our expectations this year too. It starts tomorrow. Click here to visit their website. And click here to see my rap battle. Pretty please?

Rohan Parekh

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I’m Working with Shudh Desi Endings!!!

With pressing issues like corruption, poverty, reservation and ridiculously slow internet speed affecting our country, we have taken the only next logical step we should; ban the sale of meat. Less than a week after my last blog post about a call for a ridiculous ban on condom ads, we have a new one around the corner. We never seem to run out of things to ban in our country. So we have now banned sale of meat in Maharashtra during the Jain festival of Paryushan. Now first up, I’m a Jain I do not support this ban. Freedom of religion doesn’t mean you get to enforce it on other people. I just find it ironic how Maharashtra banned the sale of meat for an 8 day Jain festival but did nothing during the month long observance of Shravana that most of Maharashtra follows! Its only a matter of time before a change.org campaign starts and I receive an email because of that one time I supported that one net-neutrality campaign when they got their hands on my email id. #AchheDin are definitely not in store for all the non-vegetarians for the next few days…

But #AchheDin seemed to have begun for me! Recently I met the creators of Shudh Desi Endings. Very shamelessly I forced them to hear one of the rap battles I’d written long ago. They were in need of writers because they look forward to expanding their team, with new channels like Shudh Desi Raps, Shudh Desi Gaane and Shudh Desi Videos. They seemed to like the stuff I’d created out of sheer boredom and decided to get me on board! When I heard I’d get paid to laze around all day sitting in front of a computer screen with internet, while there’s music playing in the background and someone or the other always ready to play a match of counter strike, it seemed to good to be true! But their office is just that! A bunch of dudes making awesome content while chilling. Any office nowadays is incomplete without a ping pong table.

So I decided to begin working for Shudh Desi Raps. Since there isn’t any female character on the channel yet, I thought of having a rap battle between Katrina Kaif and Deepika Padukone. They liked it and we plan to make the video pretty soon. How awesome is that? Do check out the channels. Can I call myself a YouTuber so soon? I don’t know. Maybe I will, someday… If my videos don’t get banned, that is. Or if YouTube itself doesn’t get banned. You can never be too sure nowadays.

Anyways, check out the video and please like it and subscribe to Shudh Desi Raps on YouTube

Rohan Parekh

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