With abundance of knowledge in literature, excellent command over singing and superb acting skills, Nagpur students gave a perfect start to Hislop College’s three-day intercollegiate event – Athena Fest 2016-17 which has been organised in association with Nation Next as the media partner. The fest which is organised by college’s body ‘The Athenaeum’ saw 120 participants from 30 Nagpur colleges and schools participating on the first day. The fest was formally inaugurated by Dipti Christian (Principal, Hislop College), Sanjay Arora (Advertising professional and chief guest), Lovely Menachery (Convenor), and Supantha Bhattacharyya (Co-convenor) by lighting the lamp.

Dipti Christian, while addressing the students appreciated The Athenaeum team for organising the 14th Athena Fest so efficiently. She then elaborated upon how Athena Fest will help in scouting and fine tuning raw talent, brushing literature skills and give confidence to students while public speaking. She also motivated students to not only show interest in dancing and singing but to also participate in all competitions just to test their knowledge and skills. By the end of her motivational speech, Christian appealed students to not just depend on books to gain knowledge as there is a big world outside to explore. She also stressed upon the importance of the habit of reading which helps in improving language and vocabulary.

Alumni of Hislop College, Sanjay Arora, who was also the Chief Guest on the first day of Athena Fest 2016-17 poured his heart out while addressing the students. He confessed that every time he gets a chance to visit Hislop college, he just can’t deny or miss the opportunity as it gives him peace and a chance to relive his college days again. He told students to not give up when there’s failure and to work even harder to overcome the failure and achieve the desired goals. He made an interesting point when he pointed out that parental guidance can never be of any harm but every individual should be able to take some independent decisions.

Word Power!

The first competition – Word Buster – tested the vocabulary of the participants. In this game, students were asked to form a group of two and were provided with worksheets to answer simple English phrases with a word or two in 15 minutes. Almost 20 groups from different colleges and schools participated in this game wherein only four groups made it to the semi finals. The final round was conducted between students of Hislop College and Laxminarayan Institute of Technology, wherein Sara Siddique and Vaishnav Venkatachalom represented Hislop college and Vishwaroop Khanorkar and Ketki Charde represented LIT college. Eventually, after a vigorous brainstorming, Ketki and Vishwaroop won the the final round bringing laurels to their college.

Singing away to glory

Next up was a fun singing (solo and duet) competition which saw participation from 12 solo participants and five duet groups. The theme for the competition was kept as – ‘Golden Bollywood Songs of 90s’. Participants were allotted five minutes each for singing and they were judged on their singing skills, stage presence and scales of highs and lows by Vrinda Joglekar, Rajesh Samarth and Annie Joseph. While all the performers were being enjoyed by the audience, Naivedya Joshi, a student from Tirpude College, gave them a reason to enjoy more when he delivered a power packed performance on the famous Bollywood hit number Khaikee pan banaras wala. The solo singing competition was won by Ketki Jagdal (Hislop College), Stuti Patil (Dada Ramchand Bakhru Sindhu Mahavidyalaya) and third position was shared by Prerna Soni and Nikhil Ramteke (Tirpude Institute Of Management Education). The duet singing competition was won by Ketki Jagdal and Debabrata Chakraborty from Hislop College and the second place was bagged by Sumit Pinto and Rajashree Agarkar from Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE).

Guess the character

The last and final competition at the day one of Athena Fest was Lit. Masters. In this competition, participants had to act a personality they envied and even dress like them. After a 5-minute performance, the audience had to guess the character the participants had chosen to act after which they were questioned by the judges. Lit. Masters was judged by Supantha Bhattacharyya and Satish Thengdi on the basis of character chosen, performance and entertainment. Around 20 students participated in the last segment of the competition wherein they brought characters like Ebenezer Scrooge, Marcus Brutus and Ananya Swaminathan (Alia Bhatt, 2 states), Aurangzeb, etc., to the stage. Eventually the competition was won by Aashish Maske, Abhijeet Chore (both from Hislop college), Shweta Umre (Institute of Forensic Science)  and Gauri Sontakke (Kavikulaguru Kalidas Sanskrit University).

Team effort

The day one of Athena Fest 2016-17 ended on a high note and everybody was all praises for the Athenaeum team consisting of Irshad Pathan (President), Abhijit Chore and Benhur Masih (Vice Presidents), Roshan Gede (Secretary), Harshal Deshpande and Tamanna Dave (Joint Secretaries), Yasmin Chimthanwala (Treasurer), Harshal Thakare (Sponsorship-In-Charge) and executive members  ? Ritika Sen, Kavisha Kakade, Aniket Jhadhav, Vincy Abraham, Aishwarya Lakhe and Abhishek Yadav.

Pictures by: Suyash Sethiya