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On the sands Sandemonium, the beach festival had a fun itinerary

Everybody here calls the fest ‘Inci’ though. Just as the singer prefers to be known as KK and the students like to call their college NITK. Just as well for everyone involved, after all they used these words over a million times on Friday night. Imagine either of them mouthing the whole nine yards of words.

“KK…KK…KK,” the crowd would chant and stomp in unison.

“NITK!” he would holler and the insane crowd would almost shatter their vocal chords just so that he could hear them ‘loud and clear’. “Not too dissimilar from any other concert,” you would say. Perhaps not.

Under the inky darkness of the sky, streaked by a weakening moon, this ritual of howling at each other took on an altogether supernatural colour. The fireworks and the lighting added to the effect. If you did not know the language and were a tad delusional you could be forgiven for thinking that an ancient tribal ritual was playing out in front of you.

Standing there, on the stage, KK looked like an Aztec Chieftain holding forth before his tribe. The tribe hung on to every breath he let out. What he received that night was not adulation or cheer – it was worship and prayer. If that is how stars are treated they really can’t be faulted for being a trifle pompous.

The music itself was good only in patches. And KK has yet another reason to be happy – the crowd didn’t boo him offstage, like they did the people who opened for him, when he launched into a string of yawnable singles somewhere near the middle of the show.

But very near everybody seemed like they were happy to be alive for another day, just so they could be part of the KK tribe. If you asked the crowd they’d probably tell you that this was the best musical concert in the history of mankind.

NITK has its own private beach and hosted a beach festival called ‘Sandemonium’ as part of ‘Inci’. The beach itinerary for Friday had beach sports and sand sculpting on the anvil. Srinath Manipal, a noted artist from Mangalore and his team, taught the students here a thing or two about the delicate art of sand sculpting.

While all this was happening at the beach another ‘most wanted’ event played itself out to a howling, screaming gallery of students inside the college premises. ‘Mr. and Ms. Incident’ drew hundreds of students to the silver jubilee auditorium.

The audience was merciless on even the slightest Faux Pas, as each contestant came up on stage. A student in the audience remarked, “This is not for people with a chicken’s heart. You need the heart of a lion to go up on the stage and have the hide of a buffalo when you come off it.”

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