Nine towers, four contests, one winner. When cultural programmes got called off on account of state guidelines, Eastern High decided to go for contests instead and to heighten the excitement, made them inter-tower.
There was quiz, sit-n-draw, tambola but the most fun perhaps was the Ashtami antakshari. “Make teams tower-wise, not friend wise," announced cultural vice-president Pamela Roy, who was hosting the event, with Anamika Sau helping out. “Many residents keep to themselves round the year but these events brought them out and will help them bond with neighbours.”
The first round was antakshari as we know it, with teams having to sing with the last letter of the song sung by the previous team. But even that was simpler said than sung. “Kabhi kabhi...” one team began but trailed off having forgotten the rest of the lyrics. The same happened with “Sajna hai mujhe...”
“Kajrare kajrare…” a team began singing but protests broke out with others pointing out that this was the chorus and not the beginning of the song. As the team struggled to think of a song with “k”, a young school girl Aashirya Roy took the mic and crooned “Cause I’m in the stars tonight, so watch me bring the fire...”
While some teams watched perplexed, others protested: “No Korean songs allowed!” Aashirya had been singing the song Dynamite by K-pop band BTS and she fought back: “The rules said Hindi, Bengali and English songs are allowed. This song may be by a Korean band by the lyrics are in English!” She was allowed to proceed.
The second round had teams picking chits and singing three songs with the word they picked. This proved tough for teams that got words like morni, pani or koyal.
The third round was the liveliest with teams having to identify songs from the opening bars played by the organisers. Hands shot up in the air as audience members recognised Ami Miss Calcutta from the 1976 film Basanta Bilap and Khali bali from Padmavat but the questions never reached them as some team or the other guessed them in time.
The final round, dumb charades, had one member of the team picking a chit and acting out the name of the film. One man hid behind whatever he could find but his mates failed to realise he was enacting Luka Chhupi. Andaz Apna Apna went unexplained too but teams successfully identified titles like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
The prize finally went to Tower 9, whose team comprised Sohini Sau, a sales executive, and three school boys — Shuddhashil Dey, Arkaja Bose and Drishan Bhattacharjee. “The elder sisters of these boys are my friends but they didn’t want to join. I felt sorry for the kids as they lacked a fourth teammate so I joined them,” said Sohini. Their “most fun” round was dumb charades where the boys identified the film Student of the Year the instant Sohini did the hook step of its song Disco Deewane.
The overall prize for Shera Tower went to Tower 7 with towers 5 and 6 coming runners-up. “This was our first big event since 2019 and we had a whole lot of fun. Our complex has lots of talent and everyone was eager to perform,” said Roy.
Did your housing complex organise on-site cultural programmes? Share the experience with saltlake@abp.in