T-nite: Background

T-nite stands for the Talent Nite. Basically, a cultural show put up by the fachchas (freshers - by now you should have got used to the term) for the tuchchas (the seniors).

As with everything else in IIM-A, its made extremely competitive by conducting it as an inter section contest.

The contest is spread over four nights and tests sections on a variety of parameters like creativity, skill, talent, noise producing ability and above all, enthusiasm.

It usually begins with something called as the Pub Run, where 'runners' belonging to different sections race from a particular point towards the mess and try and capture as much space on the mess walls as possible. Different sections of the walls hold different number of points ranging from 0 to 100. Space is captured by sticking newspapers with the section name written on them. Later the newspapers are replaced by creative posters.

The Pub Run is followed by the two mess nights. A mess night is a 100 minute show put up by the sections (25 minutes each) admist extreme levels of booing by the tuchchas in the mess. The atmosphere is hot, passionate, electric and more often that not, is an intense shouting match. If a section has an appealing slogan and can outshout everyone else who shouts against them, they score a point. If they dont, then god help their performance.

The semifinals and the finals are held in the RJMCEI auditorium and are longer than the mess nights (40 and 90 minutes respectively). Audience is willing to be a little more patient. Shouting matches take a backseat and talent shines through. Quite appropriately, the RJMCEI nights carry considerably more weightage than the mess nights and the pub run.

A lot of weightage is given to the method of entry of a section into the mess/auditorium and onto the stage. Creativity in dress codes, slogans and the general enthusiasm level is evaluated.

Also embedded into the evaluation system is the section's newsletter and website.

I think a lot of my section mates read my blog and actually find it readable, for, I wrote the section's newsletter. :)

Over the next few posts scattered among other daily happenings, you'd find me describing Section D's journey through the T-nite. You'd also find excerpts from the newsletter embedded in between in italics.

So, read on !