Anyway, back to the original topic. Solstice this year was a gala affair, running over the complete weekend from 18th to 20th Dec, with over 500 alumni and their families in attendance from all over the place. We also had alums sharing quads with current students, getting nostalgic about their ISB days.

The student villages were all decked up for Solstice, with lighting and promotional posters (comprising of some really funny extracts from the batch yearbooks) all over the place.

Student Village 2

Student Village 3

Most of the alums arrived on campus on Friday, with registrations during the day. We also had mock interviews for the current batch by some volunteer alums as well as events for kids who were on campus. There was poker from the afternoon till evening, followed by a ‘Speed Networking’ designed to help the current students get to know the alums better.

This was followed by dinner and drinks with the alums along with a stand up comedy show, ‘Hamateur Night’ was the term, at the Class of ’09 Amphitheater, by Vir Das, the Indian equivalent of Russel Peters. The show was opened by ISBians trying out their hand at stand up comedy. For some videos of his work, try looking on Youtube. [WARNING: Search at your own risk. Some of the videos may be considered offensive by some people. We take no responsibility for your search results.]

Vir Das @ ISB

The comedy hour was followed up by a bollywood themed Christmas party at the Class of ’08 lounge. We had a DJ flown in from Mumbai and the party rocked, with a huge number of people on the dance floor! This was probably the biggest party on campus till date, and we may not be able to match it again, though I am keeping my fingers crossed over the last going away party of the year.

The Party

The Dance Floor was Full

The party went on till late in the morning, with people being ferried to a nearby hotel for an early breakfast to actually end the party! And yeah, 5AM is early by all standards!!

More about the second day festivities, and the a great music concert in the next post…

- Jasnoor, Class of 2010

The best part of the weekend was the Halloween party organised by the Student Life Council at the open air 08 Lounge. It was the largest party yet, with lots of alums turning up as well. People turned up in proper Halloween attire, with lots of thought having gone into the costumes. There was food, drinks, as well a rocking DJ…

The Open Air Dance Floor

Halloween Decorations

While the party literally went on till the break of dawn, we left at around 4:30 A.M., for a long drive on the smooth road to the Airport!! Its rare that you get time for such things at ISB, traveling with friends on a long road with nothing in particular to think about, just driving to nowhere for the heck of it.

I finally got to bed at around 6 A.M., and was up running to a meeting at 10:30 A.M. Some things never change…..

- Jasnoor, Class of 2010

DJ Omar of Poison spinning at an ISB party

Friends,

Conferences, microeconomics and leadership development programs aside, I would like to report on important things: The party scene at the ISB is decent.

Hyderabad clubs tend to close around 1 a.m; if they don’t, police comes and shuts them down. Thus, the poor Hyd people have to be dressed and out of the door by 9 p.m., at the club by 10 and back home, tucked in their beds by 2. Luckily, as any proper party, ISB kind of a party is lifeless before 11. The crowd starts slowly trickling down around midnight, gets excited around 1, and stays charged till the peacocks sing good morning. Often, professors and staff are in the attendance.

The Lounge of 08, THE spot for the ISB parties, is a dance floor and bar set up in the open air. With the sound system and lighting by the best clubs in town, munch food served on the side and vivacious ISB crowd it is difficult to have it boring.

Yevheniya Krutko, Class of 2010

The Term started with an AIKYA function – where we got to meet our AIKYA families – the entire batch was in Indian formals (thanks to Guntas’ threatening) and I think this is the only time after orientation that almost the entire batch was together. The atrium was filled with people and it was an amazing day. The festivities started with a talent show and ended with lunch in the atrium.

Next came Smriti’s birthday. It started with the traditional dunking – with Smriti and friends being dunked at midnight.

All of us had planned a surprise party for her complete with party hats, friendship bands, birthday cake, etc etc. We also bought a lot of small gifts and hid them all around the campus and with each gift we left a small clue pointing towards the next gift. We waited for her to change into dry clothes to give her the first gift which was in her room and the poor girl had to run all around campus in the rain trying to find the other gifts (of course we went with her).

Finally ended the treasure hunt at her quad where she cut the cake and all of us partied some more.

The red horn in the photograph just reminded me of the noise we made that night. We had bought this hydraulic horn (working off compressed air) and the noise it made was horrible – and we made the most of it by making sure that everyone heard it 

Soon after we had a Karaoke party in my room – it started off with just another get-together, but went on till 4-5 AM. I think we saw the sunrise before sleeping.

(Did I mention that Guntas had dislocated her shoulder during the term break! That’s another story altogether)

We had started off with Talli singing and us humming along with him – but as the booze flowed, Talli finally gave up and we sang to our own tunes. We found lyrics on the net and projected them on the wall, put up instrumental mp3s in the background and sang to our hearts’ content – though barring Talli – none of us can sing to save our lives – but we sang ( in the loosest sense) nevertheless.

(There’s Deepika, Namrta and Anurag dancing on “Mera naam chin chin chu”)

That was one cool party – and we didn’t disturb the rest of the SV too!

Another such get-together we had was when we were just sitting in my room and someone mentioned the song “meri pant bhi sexy”. For the life of use we couldn’t remember the lyrics – so we did what we always do when in doubt – googled – and this led to the youtube video for the song. That led to a chain of obscure songs we had listened to in school times ranging from “sexy, sexy, sexy”, “hawaa hawaa” to “dil bole dole dole”. We went through the rounds with all the singers of that time – Suchitra, Anaida, Alisha, et al. By the time we got up – it was again 5 – I really don’t know where the time went and now don’t even remember the songs we heard – all I do remember is that we enjoyed a lot and laughed like crazy.

We changed venues and had our first barbecue party in Anurag’s balcony.

Though it rained that night and we had to shift the arrangements inside – party was fun and kudos to Anurag for organizing the same.

Next came Guntas’ birthday and we were at our wit’s ends deciding what to do for her birthday – she is the creative one and normally plans for the birthday parties. So finally we decided to surprise her by not planning anything in her quad – and gave her the impression that all of us were too busy with assignments and there won’t be any party for her. So we planned not to decorate her room and set-up Anurag’s quad for the party – boy did that backfire on us!! We had forgotten how popular she is J, first her section had planned a party for her – as they couldn’t dunk her – they balti-dunked her; then there was a small celebration at her room and finally she came to Anurag’s quad at 1:21 AM. Boy – were we bored waiting – here are some of the things we did while waiting:

Finally she came and the party truly started.

Amrita had made a crown and magic wand (complete with magic rays coming out) for her and we had bought a dress for her – the plan was to make her dress up as a magic princess – but we left out the dress as it was already too late. Of course we had also got some magic candles for her – the ones which don’t go off and had some fun watching her try to put them off.

Next Anurag had composed a song for her and we all sang (like I said earlier in the loosest sense of the word) – the lyrics are:

IK LADKI KO DEKHA TO AISA LAGA, JAISE,

ABHI PADI LAATH… JAISE,

KHATAM HUI BAAT… JAISE,

NIKLI HAI GUN… JAISE,

CHALO AB RUN… JAISE,

HUI HAL CHAL… JAISE,

IODEX MAL, JAISE,

 

(high pitch) ISB MEIN HOOOO… PYAARA DOST HUMARAAAAAA… HOOOO

Never seen Talli so excited about something . . .

Anyways the party was good fun, we had a round of passing the parcel (and with Ashish making the chits – the less said about the same the better – believe me it would get censored anyways) Anyways had lots of fun.

All too soon the term was over and we headed out to Dandeli for the term break (that’s a whole story on its own)