The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : English professor crowned Miss Saarang

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 27, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

English professor crowned Miss Saarang

By Sudhish Kamath

CHENNAI. JAN. 26. Kanak Seshadri, an English professor from the Centre for Management Studies, Bangalore, won the hearts of students when she sportingly participated in the Miss Saarang contest.

Varun Srivastava went home with an Apple iPod, for filling up a form at the iSoft stall.

Singer Kay Kay went home with goose bumps after his concert.

Guitarist Prasanna played again at the place which was once home, before he passed out from Indian Institute of Technology.

Saarang surely had a bunch of them when the curtains went down on the Republic Day.

A.R. Rahman's `Mustafa Mustafa' playing at the Nokia jukebox echoed the sentiment of the evening as scores of youth swayed to the song, before they sprung into a jig which summed up the next-best sentiment of the five-day long festival: `Enakku Oru Girlfriend Venum Ada.'

As jukebox-hostess Mary Ann says excitedly in spite of her sore throat: "There was a crowd from that tree to that stall," pointing out from one end of the stall area to the other extreme. "Five hundred people going wild."

So much that the cops soon had to join in.

A few feet away, VJ Craig was at his craziest best teasing participants at the Mr./Miss Saraang contest. He had an unlikely contestant — Professor Kanak Seshadri, who had filled up the written form the organisers distributed for the prelims, just for fun. Not only did she clear two rounds of the contest, she was unfazed by the volley of questions.

"You need courage. Getting up on that stage with the crowd at IIT really requires quite some amount of guts. She was amazing," said a visibly impressed Mr. Craig.

"You think about college life and you can't help talking about Saarang. I've been coming to Saarang ever since I was a boy but couldn't participate since I didn't have an ID," he grins.

"We usually participate only in management festivals," says Ms. Seshadri. "But last year, we convinced our management and participated. And we won quite a few prizes," she smiles.

Another person who has reason to smile is P.S.V. Arun Sharvan, Cultural Secretary, Saarang. "The response to this year's pro-shows has been quite something — an average of over 5000 people per day. Imagine, we had a crowd of over 4000 even during the classical night," he says.

"When the light from 2000 swaying mobile phones added to the electric atmosphere during the Kay Kay show, that was a sentimental moment for all of us," adds Arun.

Tushar, student co-ordinator, recalls the effect the French band Matmatah had on the audience. "They created so much energy and asked those sitting on the chairs to come over to the front. Soon, there were a hundred people dancing on the stage even as the band performed."

On stage, Prasanna doing his sound check, seemed all set for the grand finale on Wednesday evening.

Bass workshop

His fellow musician Kai Eckhardt had organised a bass workshop during the festival and musicians from all over the country took tips from the Grammy-acclaimed guitarist.

Moksha's bassist Aubrey had the biggest smile on his face when he got his guitar autographed by the master.

Talk about happy endings.

Oh yes, `Miss' Kanak Seshadri did go home with the Miss Saarang prize.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu