Antakshari – The Journey (First Half)

So, once I got my creative mojo for ‘Antakshari’ back, I started scavenging the net for video snippet of bollywood songs and this is where youtube came in very handy. Man! It’s whole different world out there or should I say 'in' there. Also, becoz of my past experience with organizing songs for ‘Sangeet’ night, I had landed myself a cool little shareware tool/website that converts youtube videos to mp4 format. It was like finding a piece of diamond among coals.

Now, that I could collate the video of the specific songs I was after with the help of the tool, most of the other tasks like choosing songs for various versions of audio rounds became a breeze. Not quite a breeze but as I already had a large collection of audio songs in my iTunes, it felt easy. Only issue I found here was that I felt as if the non-picked songs were suing me for discrimination. Imagine a parent’s plight when they have to hand-pick between their twins for a competition in which there is only one entry per family. Now multiply that plight by 1000. If you have kid(s), you would have understood what I wanted to convey and if you don't have one yet, then apology - for a wrong analogy.

As I digitally posted the RFI for the event, pinned down the possible date, pestered people to at least act on my invite, I had this urge to push the limits a bit more…it was all going too smooth, it can't be so easy, right? So, I had this flash of an idea, (not again you might say and I agree. I might have to see a doc soon) how about adding a mixed-bag buzzer round at the end? It would be a perfect icing on the cake…and not just any cake. It has to be a vegetarian Black Forest cake from a bakery in Kumara Park, Bengaluru, India. Damn!! I am distracted again…let’s get back on track. Was I pushing my luck bit too far? Was I going mad as if this is my first and last event which I will get to organize? But I didn’t care; as I just said, I had this rush of an idea and adrenaline was flowing like a, like a, hmmmm say lava. Yes, that sounds all right. Anyways, I went to work (with my Industrial & Production Engineering background) and came up with an idea for a buzzer system, which at that moment I thought was just brilliant. Some part of me still thinks the same even today. Below is the digital copy of the original draft.

From Blogger Pictures

With this initial concept, I went to consult with bunch of my friends who also happen to be my ex-colleagues and all most all of us are in IT field. What is that idiom, "Birds of same feather..." or something like that. As always happens when we meet, even though there was unanimous and exciting approval for my idea, (or invention, as I love to call it) a bunch of radically different ideas were thrown in the ring. One thing lead to another and I started having second thought about the ease of getting the material required, time to build, economical feasibility etc of my invention and at last I zeroed on a software solution instead of a mechanical one.

With a quick online research, I found very handy old-fashioned basic interpreter, CHIPMUNK Basic and a software solution started taking shape on a cool MacBook Pro. The initial idea and code came from a lab report written by Jeff Adkins . And after rewriting the entire code, when initial version of the software came into life I was elated. I forgot all about the disappointment, which I might have had for ditching my original idea invention. A quick beta testing with same brain storming (or should I say brain washing ;-) who rightfully directed me to software solution) group gave me the confidence that it can and will work. While testing, I ignored a very crucial thing which would come back to haunt me at a very crucial juncture during the event itself but I will save that for later. Only if I had discussed it with my group that night, my next story might have been a completely different one. But hey, then it wouldn’t be so interesting read, would it?

During all this, the date was finalised for the event, enthusiastic RSVPs started trickling in, ppl started offering to help, in one form or the other, after realising that the event of this magnitude is not a one-man job. THANK GOODNESS FOR THEM. In between, as I had enough motivation and time on my hand, thanks to my very understanding and equally enthusiatic life-partner, I started improvising the buzzer software and at last came up with what you see in the video below.



Realising that the minimum number of songs, including, both audio and video, needed for the whole event would be approx 90+ and extra work required to select and convert them into right snippets, some of my well-wishers offered to lend me a hand by volunteering to drop from competition and one such person was my ‘partner-for-life’ or you can say ‘partner-till-death-do-us-apart' but, the former sounds more positive than latter, doesn’t it? And even after constant pressure from her, and knowing how much my life-partner loves humming songs and that she would love to be on the other side, I didn’t budge and I was firmly ‘sticking to my guns’.

PS: Rest of you who volunteered to drop, if you are reading this, you know who you are. Thank you for your consideration.