Antakshari – The Germination

A year ago or so, an idea flashed (yeap, I have these panic attacks regularly ;-)) in my mind, thinking of organizing an ‘Antakshari’ nite for people who I enjoy being with. I am exactly not sure what triggered this panic attack but I guess I was bored to death doing my 9-5 job. Searching for that elusive dream job which would satisfy me, didn’t take me too far. Actually, on the second thought, it almost took me to Brisbane.

Oops, back to the topic. I start putting my thoughts behind the project, the format and the type of rounds and all the usual things a good ‘Antakshari’ event should have. One and only hindrances I thought at that moment was that if I were to organize it, then I wouldn’t be able to participate because of the format of the game. But it was a price I was willing to pay for a one good night of fun filled entertainment. The round which would take lot of my time I thought would be a video round as it’s hard to get snippets of the popular songs and especially if you are thinking of various genres and various generations of participants.

I started collecting snippets of video if and when I found them on the net but didn’t make much progress। Only snippets I could find were of latest movies without much of variety between them. And during this, my work life took turn for better and I landed myself a very exciting opportunity at a start-up which had signed a contract to provide a ‘from-the-scratch’ software to a joint-venture company formed by two giants from completely different domain. The project surpassed all my expectation (which was already low anyway) and my work life started looking up again. My 9-5 of the weekdays flew even before I could blink my eyes and weekends went eating, drinking and being merry with my nuclear family, mates and companions.

Between all this, my ‘Antakshari’ idea took a back seat and eventually was pushed way back in a closet, which we like to call brain। Literally, 8 months passed as smooth as a warm knife through a butter, government changed (I had a contribution in that too for first time) in Canberra, we as family went on our first big and interesting road trip covering east side of the country and life couldn’t be any better. But what I had not realised was that "अपने पैर पे ख़ुद ही कुल्हाड़ी मारदी थी" by contributing towards change of the guards at Canberra. New government while in opposition was always against the contract awarded to the join-venture company. Very first thing it did, among lot of other things, was to cancel the contract by giving one of the bullshit excuses I have heard in my life. Joint-venture fell through, my parent company had to retreat and reassign the troops to different projects/companies and my work-life again started looking gloomy.

This is when one day I got an invite from one of my close family friend for a Saturday night dinner. Also, buried in the email was a mention of ‘Sangeet’ party later that night. One thing led to another, ideas and emails flew back and forth and before I could say “What the..” I was holding a DVD of most lovable songs chosen by different invitees compiled by ‘Yours Truly’ ;-). Even though that ‘Sangeet’ night didn’t go as well as I would have liked to (apart from fabulous food as usual) but my artistic inner half was some what satisfied.

And within couple of days I started thinking again of that long lost idea called ‘Antakshari’ and I decided, whatever happens I am gonna organize it and this time I am ‘sticking to my guns’.

Next : Antakshari - The Journey.