The Mecca Incident

Mecca is a rather curious name for the festival of a college called Hindu. One way of interpreting it is that this is an attempt on the part of the college to be secular- the other way, of course, is to think of it as the Mecca of activity. Or in this case, rowdy behaviour. It is also rather curious, I would like to add in parenthesis, that no terrorist outfit has got wind of the name of our festival and premised an attack on the chosen nomenclature. After what happened today, I would support such a terrorist outfit.

Since I joined college, the festival has got worse by the year, and up until the commencement of this year's "festival" (feels rather odd calling it a festival) one would have thought bringing Daler Mehendi to our college to perform set a benchmark for lousiness (sounds rather oxymoronic, doesn't it?), but as Murphy's Law will tell you, I was Wrong. With a capital W. Elitist as this may sound, what happened this year, specifically today, was mind-numbing. The English Dramatics society of Hindu College was scheduled to perform a play called Night of January 16th today, i.e. 3rd Feb 2012. In line with most of what Ayn Rand has written, this play is a wordy-sort -of-intense-in-a-pretentious-way sort of play, and owing to the intellectually gifted general populous of our college (I wonder if they know how to open a door), our play got booed off stage. When people weren't booing, they were hooting at every form of estrogen they could see on stage, when they weren't hooting, they were yapping amongst themselves like deranged pomeranians. Efforts were made by actors and stage managers to quieten the crowd, but all they received was hoots and boos. The actors tried to use mics, get their words across to the back rows, all to no avail. The irate cast had no option but to leave the stage with the play half finished.

It is my understanding and not uncommon knowledge, I am sure, that Masque is not a very popular society and is branded as elitist, though that doesn't take away from the right to perform on stage. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, every theatre society should also be entitled to a chance to prove themselves worthy. The kind of inebriated self-centred egoism that prevailed in the auditorium today (did I mention half the audience was drunk?) is precisely the thing that will prove to be the downfall of institutions, and in my eyes, Hindu is already a terrible, terrible college.