Music has always been close to my heart! If writing is my first love, music surely is a close second. And so when office organized an 'Antakshari' competition, it was but natural, I would participate :p.
Antakshari has been special, right since childhood. Whether in school, college, ex-offices, neighborhood, parties, gatherings, picnics-- I rarely miss a chance of being part of this game. Celebrations become livelier with this game. Like me, several others enjoy playing Antakshari and so it is natural to make new friends and bond over Antakshari.
Coming back to office, this is the first time ever in our Mumbai office that we had a celebration like this. There have been different other kinds of games and fun events organized, but one where people meet in an 'Employee Club' like atmosphere--this was a first of its kind. My colleague and new joiner in our team Sanhita coaxed me to participate and she was also instrumental in building the team that represented us on this event on Feb 23, 2012. Sanhita was the main lead for our team, motivating everyone to perform and sing :).
So, we had to form a five member team. On D day, our fifth participant backed out, just like someone retires hurt in cricket :(. We were looking for someone so that we weren't disqualified from the game. Akshay came to our rescue and happily accepted the offer to join our team aptly named 'Besurey Rockstars'. Shamim and Deepa made our team complete. Special mention for Shamim who came to office especially to attend the event despite being on leave! And also for Deepa, who stays near Dockyard and works at our BKC office, but came to Goregaon only for the event. Shows we have real rockstars in our team :)
Well, well... we had tough competition at the event. 18 teams participated in the Antakshari and after multiple 'knock-out' rounds, we finally made it to the FINALS :)). Of course there were teams who were well prepared and had great singers. To be fair on us, we didn't even get a minute to discuss as a team before the event. After all, we needed to ensure that our work assignments were delivered to our clients on time. And that happened to end just as final annoucements for 'Antakshari' registrations were being made by the HR team.
Overall, it was a fun-filled event. Sudhanshu was the perfect Master of Ceremony for the evening and he entertained the audience with his classy voice. Rajesh on the synthesiser played melodious 'dhuns' for us--every tune rightly identified got the teams 10 points and if we missed, the bonus point would go the next team guessing it right. The full HR team was also present cheering everyone continuously and clicking pictures.
After 10 rounds of the game in the FINALS, we were crowned 'Second Runners Up'. The winning team had excellent singers who had great knowledge in music. They truly deserved to win.
On our team, it was a combined effort...all of us took turns in singing and I was lucky a few times to be able to identify some unknown numbers :). Of all the interesting rounds in the Finals, there was one round where we had to sing a superimposed song...meaning.. sing the lyrics of one song in the tune of another. Our team was asked to sing "Urvashi Urvashi, take it easy policy" in the tune of "Ka karu sajni, aye na balam". Imagine the plight!!! Poor but happy me, went on stage for the final rendition. (Holding the mike to sing actually feels great!). After singing, I got a new name during this Antatshari. The host kept referring to me as the 'Urvashi girl'. I finally had to announce my name before the audience started referring to me as Urvashi :p.
We got yummy chocolates as prizes and the event ended on a happy note with people promising to set up a committee and volunterring to be part of more such gala evenings. More than anything, this was a great opportunity to bond, to get to know colleagues with whom we have been working for over 3 years but didn't have a name to put on the familiar face.
I look forward to more such fun events this year.
