Incandescence '19: The euphoria ends with the promise of a better future

Incandescence, the annual cultural festival started in NIT Silchar with a mixture of euphoria and sadness on account of the soldiers being martyred in the Pulwama attack.

“We all have mixed feelings regarding Incandescence starting on the same day as it was a day of mourning and a sad day for all Indians.”, said Bhaskar Ganguli, executive head of Incandescence. He also added, “As we say the show must go on, so we started our annual cultural fest with a deep sad void in our hearts.”

The martyrs were paid homage in the condolence program that took place near the New Gallery. Candle lighting took place where students, all the dignitaries, along with the director of NIT Silchar Professor Sivaji Bandyopadhyay participated. Two minutes of silence was observed, and also before the start of every event, one-minute of silence was observed.

The theme of this year’s fest was “The Gamers’ Arcade.”

After the inauguration, the first event that took place was Glitterati Night.

The next day started with Razzamataz. RAZZMATAZZ is a module especially for school students of Barak Valley. It continues for two days and tests students and aims at bringing out the best in them.

It was followed by a singing competition called “Voice of Incand” and

“Nataraj”, the “open” dance competition taking place in “Gymkhana Park”. Another such event was “Indie Unplugged”, organised under the open sky with amazing decoration and bonfire, definitely the most ideal ambience for celebrating friendship and love. This year Tejas Menon performed at Indie Unplugged.

The fest not only checks the talent in singing or dancing but also how creative the students can be with their ideas and their arguments. One such event is NITSMUN (NIT Silchar Model United Nations) which is a platform where the intellectual minds formulate policies on the given agenda and convince others to accept their proposal by smartly playing their chances. When asked, the Secretary-General of  NITS MUN, Shah Alam Mazumder, as what is NITS MUN, he said, “NITS MUN is an exercise in research, public speaking, teamwork, leadership, and diplomatic skills.”. He said he got exposure to this event in his college days and speaks intelligently about the importance of this event. He said, ” In this era of globalization where you need to be more globally aware than ever, NITS Model UN helps you in becoming a more concerned global citizen by role-playing as a delegate of a country or an organization.”

Another such event was “Deprador”, a debating event of incandescence where best of the debaters within NIT Silchar face each other to debate on a particular topic. This year, the topic was “Implementation of Universal Basic Income in India will lead to stagnation of development.”

The photography club of NIT Silchar, Obiettivo organised an exhibition under the module “DARPAN” which showed the best of the shots that got submitted from around the country.

Incandescence takes care if you are a foodie, as they organize “A Carnival of Bites”, a perfect place to go and eat while enjoying music.

With increasing popularity for Open Mic, how can Incandescence be far behind as they organised “Cosplay”, an open mic event where participants can dress up and role play whatever they like, and show their skills.

Famous comedian Aakash Mehta visited NIT Silchar to make the people roll on the floors laughing, which was organised under module “Just for Laughs NITS”. Followed by this was the module “Kavi Sammelan”, where the poem lovers enjoyed the presence of Charanjeet Charan, Vineet Pandey, and Sandeep Shukla, who entertained everyone with their beautiful poems. After this was the amazing body-building competition under the module “Mr. NITS”.

“Sokratik”- a one day long MELAquiz was organised, which was hosted by well–known quiz-masters making it a great platform for the knowledge-savvy mind.

Department of Management Studies organised ” Paarbon”, an event that takes care of the business enthusiast with their exciting events such as “Sell your ideas”, “Business treasure hunt”, Business Quiz, “IPL auction” and many others.

One of the most exciting modules was “Carpe Diem”, which is a dream, if not “paradise” for the party lovers in NIT Silchar. This time, popular Bollywood singer Nikhita Gandhi and one of the famous band from Delhi PARASHARA performed. In addition, there were DJ beats with Paranox and Prinal.

And last but not the least, for the metal lovers, there was “Thundermarch”, as POLYPHIA and Yonsample were there to make people headbang to their tunes.  Along with this, metal bands from all over the nation participated in “Battle of bands” to show their skills, talent, passion, and love for music.

All the events took place inside the NIT Silchar campus at different locations. The whole Gymkhana body and the persons involved in the different modules and teams worked day and night to make the event a grand success. Even when nature did not show mercy and it started to rain, the events that were taking place in the open air was relocated to different indoor locations in no time, taking care that the events don’t get canceled.

Taking the security into consideration, Ghungoor Police station was approached. “For the safety purpose of the students inside the campus during the programme and to avoid any undesirable circumstances, we approached Ghungoor police station for 10 security personnel.” said Ankan Kishore Pathak, the General Secretary of Gymkhana Union Body. He also added, “We are thankful to them for providing the security and for helping us in smooth conduction of this grand event.”

Everyone was in praises for the organizing team of Incandescence 2019. When the ex-students were asked to share their views, ex-GS Technical, Shubham Tiwari said, ” This time it is kind of unhappy moment for me that I am not able to enjoy it for the first time in five years. And after seeing it through social media that the hard work done by the organizing team is too good and the events are going really well, I am of course missing to be a part of it.”

“A lot of tiny bits and pieces are added, broken, fixed and added again before you witness the grand portrait. These memories will remain with you if you are an alumnus of the Institute.”, said Dev Manas, the ex-VP of Gymkhana Union Body of NIT Silchar when asked to share his views on this years’ incandescence. He also added, ” I hope that everyone enjoys these 4 days and I also convey my best regards to the entire organizing team.”

When it comes to managing an event on such a big scale, it is very easy to lose motivation. But the leader is the one who overcomes it. When asked Anirban Roy, the Vice President of Gymkhana Union Body, he said, “The only thing that motivated me over the past few months was the urge to make Incandescence bigger and better than ever. Of course, it was meant to be very challenging but the entire task was very well distributed among the various teams which made it quite easy to execute.” He also wished the upcoming body saying, ” I really hope that the organizers in the coming years will definitely make it grander.  “

The chief coordinator of the Incandescence 2019, Victor Das, who was one of the main pillars behind the success of Incandescence, very humbly, made it look really easy to manage such a huge event.  He said, “Overall it was a great experience from talking to various artists to inviting a set of a line-up. The motive was to keep the crowd happy and excited.” When asked about his feeling on the end of the tenure as General Secretary, Cultural, he emotionally added, ” We wish that our future organizers would keep up the pride of our Festival, Incandescence.”