Feb 28, 2010

BEING MIND F****D AND NOW

Firstly, I want to thank everyone even remotely related to SPACE. SPACE 2010 was my life for the past 1 month.

A week before the festival, SPACE 2010 was nowhere. We neither had the sound guys nor the logistics guys in place. We hadn't finalised on our pro-nite. We had our differences and it was a big thing on my mind. Sunday, 21st February 2010 was one of the worst days of my life. It was more to do with the helpless situation that we were in more than anything else. Finances were no where to be seen. There were huge costs. It would have again been a recession hit SPACE. Sunday night, I was not interested in how good SPACE was going to be. I just wanted SPACE to be done, good or bad. I wanted things around me sorted out. Ask Suresh and Shilpa and they will tell you what I was going through. I can't actually say 'what I was going through' but it should be said 'what we were going through' . Things were just not working out. Now I know why. It was because of lack of finances. It was frustration. Plain frustration.

Then Monday happened.

We got a cheque of a huge amount. And then things started to look fine. Not just fine, they started to look good. We fixed our sound guy and our logistics guy. We fixed on out band. Publicity for Faridkot began. We even started receiving cheques of small-small amounts. Our budget started to look good. We knew we could have a good SPACE. There was no ego now. There were no differences now. It looked all good. People were working in their department. Work was on full swing. And I didn't really know when I was standing with SPACE Committee at the inauguration ceremony. It was all so fast.

There are so many things I have learnt organising SPACE. Most importantly, how to keep 20 people together, towards one common goal. There are bound to be ifs, buts and raise voices. That's a part of any entire organisation. You cannot avoid it. There will be times when you feel you don't belong but you got to ignore it and wait for the bright sunny day. You need to soothe everyone's egos. There were a number of people who told me you need to be firm with people. 'TU GS HAI'- this is what I was told. But I don't think I can be authoritative with people. That is probably the reason I didn't have a tiff with anyone. Yes I raise my voice a few times (but I know it was frustration). With me its not even 'raat gayi baat gayi.' It's just 'waqt gaya, baat gayi'. People said if 4 people come to me and tell me something, I easily listen to it. That's not the case. No one knew what was going through my mind except Shilpa and Suresh. Eventually, I let majority take a decision. I didn't really want to hurt any of 21 member committee. Just because I am the GS, I didn't want me to ruin hard work of the other 20 members. Eventually, I did what I felt was right, even if I took time taking the decision.

A blog update after a long time. I had decided I at least need to have one article on SPACE. Here it is.


From what I hear, SPACE 2010 was good, I assume it was good. If someone comes to me and tells me 'Your SPACE sucked', I wouldn't really mind. I would take it as my fault. I apologised for the 'Prayag Fiasco' even tough we organisers were not to be blamed. Faridkot was good. Visual Impact was good.

All is well that ends well. :-)

The only event for which I was present the entire time was STAND UP COMEDIANS and ohhhh, they rocked. Thanx Anna for getting them to our college.

Hopefully, I would now have time (to think what to write) to update my blog henceforth.