The Magic Of INDIAN MAGIK: A Captain's Account

Guys this is going to be a very long post so let me apologise in the beginning itself bcoz a lot of my readers claim that why do u write such long and detailed narrations of your experiences

THE CONCEPT
Ever since milestone started coming near one of the juniors, Vikas kept pestering me and Priya that we should be in his team. And everytime i kept ignoring him, saying, who is gonna be a part of a juniors team. For almost 2 weeks this guy did not give up hope. Then suddenly 1 day i was walking on the road to the gate alone thinking about something, dont know what. Its then that a thought struck me. Sampark, why not make your own team. These guys who are keen to have them in their team, can be my team members. Then i thought about Urja (later to be renamed Syenergy), the team my friends were in.
What would i tell them, all the seniors would make fun of heading a juniors team. But then i thought about the benefits of the team that i was conceptualising. It would give me the practical hands on experience of my MBA skills. I wanted to see myself if i had the power to pull a team of 18 through such an event. (Very frankly i wasnt very satisfied with the result on this front)
So 2 days later it was final. With Priya as the perfect support for such a venture i was running my own team. Vikas and a few others had to leave the team because of Placecom commitments and in came Priya and me. With still quite a few slots left a lot of planning went into the other senior members. After asking a lot of prospects and rejecting many more the team of seniors were ready. All of them strategically thought about, Anubhav Bansal for Finance and Operations, Aditya Sharma and Kapil Tuteja for IT and Shweta Agarwal for HR. Priya and myself would cover the Marketing and HR front.
The juniors section consisted of Anuj, Akanksha, Anumeha, Anirudh, Mikhail, Nikeeta, Varun, Sweta, Yogi, Ricky, Sunny and Vibhor. We had Vikas as the perfect back up along with Pooja. The team was ready and raring to go

THE JOURNEY FROM OM TO FUSION TO INDIAN MAGIK
It took us 4 days to come up with a name which could comply with the theme of Anunaad: Resonating tech, tact and talent. On the very first day itself we came up with the name OM: The Resonance of Life. I fell in love with this name. First day it was rejected by all but by next day when we didnt get anything we decided to go ahead with this name. I had already thought of the marketing strategy, the ways to promote it and what designs this promotions had to be in. But next day came another twist in the tale. From insider sources we came to know that 2 yrs ago a team had already used this name so it would be better if we found another name. We were on the road again. a lots of names which other teams used were discussed by us....Synergy, transformers etc...all had been rejected by us. Then towards the end, in a desperate attempt we came to Fusion. But then i got the firing of my life from Akanksha, only God knows what had pissed her off so much. That night we sat and discussed and discussed and out of the blue came Indian Magik. We were gonna connect Tech, tact and talent with India.
We chose From Aryabhatta To Kalam as our tagline just to connect the name to the theme which otherwise sounded like a Kurkure flavour. i still remember Shantesh laughing away to glory when he heard this name. He kept teasing me " teda hai, par mera hai" a line from one of the Kurkure ads. But we were finally there with a name
INDIAN MAGIK: From Aryabhatta to Kalam.

THE PREPARATION
Our prep started a little late as i had already seen Syenergy begin with their banner painting. Priya and me had a very tough time getting the juniors to understand that Milestone is much beyond fun and frolic. The hard work and time put in is enormous. These 2-3 days included a lot of running and going mad. From running to Kalmeshwar to get the banners stitched to sending people to the city to get the Tshirts printed and the paints bought. I still remember the first day when Anirudh came back with the paints and the tshirt, i had got so pissed off with him. Next day i had to run to the city early in the morning to get this work done. Even the last day a final attempt for the kites and the graffiti boards was another hell of an experience. The pressure and stress had started showing on me and it took Priya a lot of effort to cool me down. Thanx a ton to the biker guys, Paaji, Vibhor, Mikhail, Kedia who would be ready to run to kalmeshwar or nagpur at any given moment, sometimes twice a day. Thanx to my designing team of Anirudh and Anumeha and my painters, Varun and Nikki who worked so hard to get the BEST BANNERS of Milestone 34 this year ready. On the sidelines, paaji led the scripting team and Akanksha and others took care of the dances. Sweta and Nikki with Pooja helped get my exhibition ready.
DAY 1
ICE BREAKER
That day i was just back from the city when the script was finalised and practice about to begin. I noticed that the script was a little out of the rules mentioned last night but it being the last moment i didnt raise any questions. Luckily the committee also didnt raise any questions on outside characters being added to the storyline. My movie on which i had to make a spoof was Hera Pheri and full credit to my actors, especially Kapil Tuteja. Bro ur acting of Paresh Rawal was the defining factor of this years Ice Breaker. His sizzling performance catapulted us to the 2nd spot behind Trinity. We had created the first impact. With wondersful supporting performances from Andy as Majumdar, Paaji as Sarabjit Singh and Adi as Jaisimha. Indian Magik had arrived.

THE D DAY: THE PROMOTION RACE
At 1.30am the promotion race was to begin from Baddi Court. In an act of negligence we forgot to ask our supporter, Pooja to change the Team Tshirt when she went to Priya's room. This year the rule did not allow any non-member to help in the promotions. Just before things began complains started coming in of Indian Magik supporters being spotted elsewhere. We, the team which wanted to play things fair was unnecessarily getting dragged into trouble. Pooja was removed from there before the time limit started and we had a narrow escape.
The promotion race was to begin on a whistle and team members were supposed to run and grab spaces for their banners. It was indeed a dangerous thing especially when it had poured a few hours ago. In one of the hoax starts we saw the preparations the other teams had done with their back up staff. From A Block banners of Samanvay flew down. From B Block Transformers and Trinity dropped their banners. We even saw banners coming down from locked rooms with lights switched off. We wanted to play fair, but teams had other plans.
It began and all of us ran in different locations and Kudos to my team. They managed to get all the places we had targetted. Be it the base camp. Be it the girls in B Block. Be it my balcony in A block and be it the canteen.
The only issue which happened was when Varun handed over the banner to a third person while tying, so as not to keep it on the wet floor below. This was spotted by the Milestone Committee and negative points were awarded. But overall it was a victory on the space grabbing front as well.





DAY2
THE GAMES
The games next day started with IT Game and Finance game. In the IT game we stood second with the team of Adi and Tuteja but we deserved first as its an unspoken fact that the team that came first, Swakriti, knew the answers beforehand. But we were happy, not knowing that this result would be the deciding factor in the end.
In the finance game, as well, there was an issue with a flaw in the game. All the expected winners disappeared. Everyone expected this game to be a straight fight between Sanket of Syenergy and Bansal of Indian Magik and to the surprise of many, both did not even appear in the Top3.
The Vyaktitwa game also turned out to a disaster. I had gone for this and because of one wrong decision of mine, we dropped from 1st position to 5th and eliminated. We were leading but a mistake under pressure and we were out.
Nukkad Natak was another failure as we came 9th out of 15 teams and Biz Quiz was our most disasterous performance with 13th. By the end of day 2 we had slipped to 5/6th position and it seemed like Indian Magik glory days were very short lived but not for long

THE RACE TO THE TERRACE
The terraces last year opened on day 1 during the night itself but this year for safety reasons they were supposed to be opened at 5.30 pm the next day. Every team was supposed to nominate 4 members who were supposed to run to the top. It was a scene straight out of Main Hu Na and New York which included a race to the top of the college terrace. The B Block terrace was our main target and Paaji and Sunny were given this responsibility and A block was given to Anuj and Yogi. From where i was standing, my balcony in A block i could see the B block race very clearly. The whistle blew and they were off. Sunny soon took 4/5 th position as they entered the hostel. anxious moments as everyone waited for the racers to reach the terrace. Sunny reached 4th and another good attempt by all the 4 to capture all the targetted places. Finally all our banners were up and the kites were filled up to cover the spaces left. Only the basecamp needed to be brought up to the mark...

THE BASECAMP
Things at the basecamp were not seeming to go well while the other teams around had begun with their activities. The exhibition was up but there was nothing good enough to attract the crowds. I had gone for the Vyaktitva game when things turned around. Priya along with the juniors had started the Photo studio where people could get themselves clicked as ravan and ram and hanuman and even Charlie Chaplin. Lots of people got their ramlila dreams fulfilled. Even mazumdar sir got himself clicked as charlie chaplin with his trademark moustache. paaji had started a game of his own where people had to pop a table tennis ball into a mug that he had attached to his hip. and he was junping around in different directions to make the game more difficult in each round. This attracted the people to the exhibition as well which was my trump card to get people to understand my name so an exhibition was organised which had the welcome board saying " Indian Magik present Indians who created Magik with their Tech, Tact and Talent. " i used this to get people out of the Kurkure mindset. The Indian Magik basecamp was a hit.

At 4 in the morning when other teams had would up we continued, this resulted in free publicity from the Trinity tent where, first, himanshu arya and then, jay upadhyay kept their comments flowing on Indian Magik, Sampark Sachdeva and his tirth yatra to France. One of the great memories of Milestone.
Day 2 came to an end with lots of brainstorming on the Marketing game to be held early next morning. The topic had been given and a service had to be promoted for jail inmates. priya, me, varun and kapil cracked our brain till 5 in the morning trying to think of something. We rejected the cooperative store, and event management company, an investment back, a courier service and had almost finalised on a home furnishings company when an idea struck me. The stress relieving company that i had made a presentation on while i was in France. We all went of to sleep for 2 hours before we would get back to our marketing mission. End of a more of less disappointing day 2 which saw Indian Magik drop from 2nd to 6th spot.

DAY 3
THE GAMES
I got up at 8 am to prepare for the marketing game at 10. I tried desperately to add marketing concepts to the PPT i had.... but seemed to fail badly...
9am and not too much progress.... By 9.20 a thought to skip the game also crossed...but somehow, however idiotic i finished the PPT
Our team, Priya, Varun, Akanksha and myself reached the hall with our shoulders drooped... By the time 4-5 teams had finished their presentations, my confidence started building up. It seemed people were in a worse situtation than we were.
I went up on the stage, relieved as much stress of myself with my company BODY, MIND and SOUL... an hour later the results came. The very game that i was about to quit, I came 2nd..... Yo man, thats the way..
The day continued with Tuteja, Bansal and Paaji coming 2nd in the Operations game...

With 2 second spots for today and 1 earlier, Indian Magik was back on track again....We lost the HR game. We came 4th and that also by 1 mark.... A setback when we were expecting a good show...

With this the management games were over and the results as of now were as follows:
Samanvay 545
Indian Magik 541
Transformers 507
In Sync 450
Syenergy 395
Swakriti 375

Now what was left was the creative side of it.... The strong points of Syenergy and Swakriti and the the weak points of Samanvay and Transformers... For Indian Magik and InSync it was not known what to expect... The tides could turn anyway....

The Face painting took place but results werent revealed.... the next day the graffiti boards were submitted and explanations given.... i felt that face painting was ok and the graffiti was good( we later came 3rd).... the promotion marks (500) were also left and i knew if anything could save me from here it would be my promotion

DANCE
The dance show began at around 8. Samanvay people gave a mixed reaction. Transformers was the most enjoyable but the least coordinated. InSync was ok. Syenergy was rocking and Swakriti was great. The pressure was on and Indian Magik was (teammates, not my view but the general public) was bad. We had to somehow save the last event, the fashion show.......

FASHION SHOW
We reached the baddi court with very little preparation... i was damn tensed and nervous... i couldnt screw it up from here.... Swakriti and Syenergy were at the best again.... Transformers and Samanvay seemed to have let the lead go... InSync did not live upto the glamour expectations that the people expected from it... Indian Magik, with all the screw ups, Surprise surprise, went real well. Especially the Indian flag we revealed at the end....
Thank God for this last minute savior.....(we finally came 3rd in fashion show behind Swakriti and Syenergy)


NIGHT BEFORE THE RESULTS
The results were to be revealed the next evening at the LRC. The night before it was bad for the captain of Indian Magik....First i sat with Amit, then with Pranay and Kabra and then with others on the floor discussing and analysing the situation.... I knew Syenergy would come flying up but promotion was its weak point....Transformers and Samanvay were no more the threats they were till now... InSync seemed to have lost the plot somewhere... Now after the ok face painting and satisfactory graffiti, bad dance and good fashion show, the only thing which could save Indian Magik from sinking was the promotion. I knew if i could lose it to anybody now, it would be Swakriti. I barely slept that night with the committee members highly guarding their cards.

THE RESULTS
The result was at 5.30pm and as i was about to leave the class at 5.00pm a SMS came... It was one of my junior members....
The results had leaked.... it said "We're 2nd, Swakriti 1st and Syenergy 3rd" Firstly i was furious at the Milestone members, if they could have guarded the results for 24 hrs couldnt they have done it for another 1/2 hr.
the results began and as expected Syenergy were 3rd with Rs6000 as their prize. Indian Magik after all the turmoil managed to hang on to the 2nd spot with Rs12000 and as per my calculation lost to Swakriti who got Rs 18000..... It is now when i came to know that we had lost just by 10 points.

THE AFTERMATH
I walked out of the LRC hall only to be lifted by my team and been given bumps like my Birthday. Didnt know that losing by 10 points would get me beaten up by my own team mates. Then an open counter at the canteen and the Maggi's and parathas flowed but the best part of the celebration was left. 3 Thumbs Up bottles were blown off instead of champagne. Kapil and vibhor had to sacrifice their Tshirts in this celebration. The team party is yet to happen since the very next day half my team was in bed. I was down with cold and fever, Priya, Anirudh and some others joined the bandwagon. Sunny went one step ahead. With stones in his kidney, he had to leave for Kolkata to get himself operated. He is back and recovering well. Akanksha is on the wheelchair with a torn ligament.....

The Learnings
I won but failed in what exactly i had gone into see. I could not keep myself away from the tension and the stress. I had a very hard time managing my team which was only possible with Priya's help.. Thanx sis, you were great. No complains to my team, just that i didnt not know how to get some messages across in a more receptive way. Thanx guys, you made me learn a 1000 things about myself.
This experience will go a long way in teaching me how is it that you manage and understand your subordinates and manage people in your workplace. I realised that getting tensed and stressed and losing your cool doesnt find a solution but you need a more refined way to do that.

Before i wind up my acknowledgements....
Thanx Mom for making it clear to me which way i should go, my own team or with my friends
Thanx Poo for understanding why i was so busy and couldnt give time
Thanx to my friends at Syenergy for understanding that the friendship was at its place (even though all the leg pulling u did)

Thanx Priya for being my coolent... It was your hardwork that paid off
Thanx Bansal, Adi, Tuteja and Shweta,....each one played their role very well
Big Thanx to my junior guys: Anuj, Akanksha, Anu, Andy,Miky, Niky, Varun, Sweta, Yogi, Paaji, Sunny and Vibhor..... It was your team and your victory completely

And the biggest Thanx to all the Milestone guys, Shantu, Ritika, Swati, Adi, Ankur, Ritu, Mittal, Pankaj, and others....sorry i dont remember all the names....Juniors i barely know a few names... Thanx guys for making Milestone34 as unbiased and hassle free as possible.... You actually changed my impression which was formed last yr.... You guys are great