Amidst Busy Holidays

After the fairly good examinations and a hectic third semester in college, I was delighted to have a worthy 20-day break. Alas! There’s barely any time to relax.

The first ten days of the holidays went into the very enriching media tour for the second year students of MCMS. Our journey began from Bangalore, where we visited some big media houses namely Deccan Herald, Samaya TV, Whyaxis and Nirvana Productions. The welcome we got at every juncture was utterly encouraging. The people we spoke to were some of the best in their respective fields and are thorough professionals, yet they took time of their busy schedule to make us feel at home. They were open to any question and made sure the objectives of our visit were fulfilled.

Similar was the case when we next visited Mumbai. The busiest city of the country welcomed us with open arms as it does to a millions of others. The day starts and begins here at 4 in the morning. We travelled places via the packed Mumbai local trains, pushing and pulling our way in and out of the trains. Somehow, we managed. In Mumbai, we first visited Waggener, a PR agency, and then later Mudras, one of India’s biggest advertising agencies. Finally, we visited CNBC TV, a channel owned by the Network 18 group. CNBC was probably the place where we learned the most and were explained each and every detail of their production process. It was indeed a lifetime experience to get to know all these media houses so closely and learn directly how they function.

From Mumbai, we headed to Goa, my home, for the 42^nd International Film Festival of India where we combined with our juniors and lived in Nuvem for about four days. Like the previous few years, IFFI once again was a disappointment for me, simply because of the poor manner in which it is organized. The volunteers are inefficient and are not delegate-friendly. Nevertheless, I am happy that at least the films were not a disappointment.  Among the few films that I watched, Nader and Semin: A Separation, was one that I liked the most. The beautiful Persian film makes you feel for every character regardless of how positive or negative their role is. The climax is simply classy.

So that was all about the media tour. The remaining ten days seem to be vanishing in no time. I’ve spent seven days at home doing all the possible chores, meeting up with friends, visiting relatives, attending funerals and what not. Ghosh! College is better. Anyways, just a few more day for college to begin and before that, I may make a small trip to Pune.