The Holi Special - Who am I??

Date - 11th March 2009

Venue - IIMK, Kerala

Occassion - Holi

Time : 8:45

Damn, had to get up early on what is regarded as a holiday all over the country, but not so at an IIM. Had not one but two classes in the day - HR and Marketing. one tolerable and the other a nuisance. But still there is a 90% attendance rule and so the class was almost full barring a few batchmates ( who were either too lazy to come or were enjoying their 10% leeway)

Also the India - New Zealand was underway with Sehwag in an awesome form... Match was closely followed via cricinfo during the class and then seen in the mess after 12 (barring the too frequent rain breaks )

Had a special lunch organised for the occassion but it was a dud. The food didn't taste too different from the awful food we get everyday except the sweetdish.

Finally it was 3 and the scheduled time for starting the Holi the IIMK way had arrived. A massive tank full of water which saw nearly everyone on campus being lifted and thrown inside. Both gulals and grease were freely used.. the effect will be clearly visible in the classes tomorrow and it remains to be seen how our profs will react. It was totally awesome. My first Holi @ hostel and it totally rocked. With chilled thandai (with bhang added ) and some raunchy songs being played it set a rockin mood.

In the pics above everyone has his tees removed not because they may get dirty or it was hot, but because the tees no longer existed. They had been ripped apart to leave everyone topless.

BBQ night @ K1

Its already two weeks now since we had that awesome BBQ night. All this time I waited just because I could not lay my hands on the pics for the day, and this was one awesome night which just cannot be explained by mere words.

So lets start from how it all started. The previous day another of our hostel had its BBQ party in which they used a small pot like substance as the BBQ vessel. Well we also got a bit excited and so asked them to lease it for a day for our very own party. But they refused and this was a huge blow to us. We were now determined to have a bigger and better BBQ and so two of our angry hostel souls ran from pillar to post to arrange the stuff. They had to plead with the guy to complete it on time. Panner, vegetables, fish and chicken were arranged from the NC and masala and all was bought from the outside. With the refrigerator full of beer it was going to be a great night.

The preparations started on a grand scale. Ingredients were mixed and the respective dishes were marinated by our very own budding chefs. The lighting of coal was an experience in itself. Huge amount of financial newspapers had to bear the brunt(rather were burned). It took more than half an hour to get it started and to have an even burning (constant airing required by frantic waving of newspapers).

The marinated stuff was skewed and placed on the red hot coals. It took ages to get it heated from the inside for the outer layer had been burnt black but the inner layers were still pretty raw. The skewing was not proper for whenever the stick was rotated the food too adjusted itself to return to its original position. But as time passed and more and more food was prepared the quality started improving.

Non veg had to be kept for over half an hour to get a good taste whereas the paneer barely survived a few minutes as the pieces kept falling at regular intervals but this was not a major problem for panner can easily be eaten even if a bit undercooked but the same does not apply to non veg stuff.

Standing next to the hot coal with a chilled beer in one hand and munching on the BBQ chicken with the other, it was priceless......