bnrc family fiesta sponsored by.....

i guess it was inevitable that sooner or later a corporate marketing blitz would step in and take over what was a homegrown hand on local community event. in the earlier avatar this used to be a small affair with lights and stage designed and executed by local hands in whatever resources that could be mustered together. the preparations were tiring and elaborately planned at multiple meetings in my living room with my mother as the presiding deity and john and shyam as the main point men. gangadharan uncle was the stern accounts man.

with everyone getting busier with their careers and families the bnrc annual events had dwindled down to a trickle. while earlier there were drawing competitions, singing competitions, the badminton competitions; it all seems to have vanished in the past two years. so then when hindustan times and a bunch of sponsors turns the local get together into a gigantic over production with banners everywhere, a stage that can actually withstand the jumping up and down of the dance competition, and event managers on walkie talkies coordinating the show like it’s the filmfare awards; can we complain at the loss of the good old days?

but the scale was disproportionate to the event. its like they brought a bull dozer to topple a house of cards. mukul, mukuls mom and me were judges for the fancy dress competition and the singing competition. the kids in costume were cute, but the singers ranged from the ordinary to the screechy. the setting was expecting sunidhi chavan and instead got precocious little girls whose parents had pampered into thinking that they had great voices. not that it was a problem in any way- but it was rather odd.

i missed the homegrown scale of the earlier shows that used to fit rather snugly around the ordinariness of the talent. what earlier used to pass off as sweet eccentricities of ordinary people here was amplified into gross proportions by the lights, the loudspeakers, the banners and the crass plugging of products ranging from supermarkets to motorcycles in every break.