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

It is hard to imagine the hours of effort that goes into organising an event of this size. It will go for three days and will have close to 1000 people participating.. throughout the three days there are many things planned …

This year we are having to put our sweat and tears into raising funds (yes, raising funds is part of the deal), my team has really felt the liquidity crisis.
However , organising an event like this is a real life class room and I’m sure one of the greatest experiences me and my team will take with us, so many opportunities to learn and to make friends.

We have to invite a celebrity speaker, try to see if we can get a organise a concert and plan many many more activities on a shoe string budget this year..
The theme we have decided on is ‘Heroes – The homecoming’ in times like this we all have to find the hero within ourself (okay okay I now that it is getting a bit mushy)..

There are still a million and one things to do and my day usually starts off with making 10 calls to sponsors and touching base with my team to see just how much work lies ahead for the day.. i quickly run to class try to switch to student mode..see what assignments i need to complete before night fall .. in all of this we continue to see how to push the organising along… just this morning i found out that one of the main venues that we needed was booked for something else.. so there was a lot of running around before that fire was faught… one other sponsorship prospect went from green to red.. not a good feeling but will keep on keeping on .. my friends tell me that the only word they hear from my mouth these days is Solstice and that when I have my first kid maybe i should name it Solstice (now thats not funny .

The best part is that I have a great team of people and we all lift each others spirits when any of us hit a roadblock.. We are all learning and living it together..

Hope to see all the alumni fly down this year with their capes on to be part of the event and celebrate with us….

Will keep you posted as the event takes shape…. http://www.isb.edu/Solstice

P.S I think I will head to the books now as I have a final exam in a day