FAC, not FAQ

FAC is the acronym for the Fine Arts Club of IIT Delhi. My association with this club was probably the best part of my non-academic life in these 2 years. What started in the first year as an attempt to explore the active extra-curricular life of the campus, turned into a responsibility in the second year.

The initiation had to wait till late in the first semester because of the ban barring the freshers from indulging in any extra-curricular activity till Rendezvous. Post the cultural extravaganza, all of the freshers were summoned by our hostel seniors for some real healthy interaction. Thus, the mysteries of BRCA, BSA, BSP and God knows how many Bs were revealed to us, a universe so enchanting that many shining knights sacrificed their careers, to bask in the glory of their deeds for more than the standard 4/5 years. When the time came to declare ourselves available at the beck and call of the seniors, I was one of the very few bakras to have volunteered for the creative club.

One of the many advantages of being alloted a newly constructed hostel, apart from the spacious rooms and clean bathrooms, is the opportunity to be the 'one-eyed king in the land of the blind'. So, one day, me and another such bakra were pitted against the legendary wolfs of the art fraternity of the campus in a water-painting comp-event, to save the hostel from earning negative points in case of no entry from the hostel. Having offered my services many times by participating in almost all the events of the club, sometimes even at the expense of academics, I had become the fac-faccha of the hostel, expected to attend to the creative demands of other clubs as well, be it designing posters for NSS, or to paint the gigantic backdrops for the glamorous Dance and Dramatics club events.

When the time of reckoning came, I was among the top-runners for the dreaded post of the FAC representative of the hostel for the next session. However, one of the other fac-facchas also felt that he deserved one year of devotion to the hostel and the motivation to take a detour from academics. After uncountable sessions of funde from the seniors of the rival factions in hostel politics, I was pumped up to take the plunge for the sake of a better future. I had to skip some lectures on the day of the elections to go for the last minute door-to-door campaigning in the entire hostel of more than 350 residents. After pestering every voter in the queue to tick my name in the list, for the 2 hours of voting, I managed to scrape past the other candidate to bag the coveted job.

Now, I had become the official bakra of the hostel for the next year. The first major duty was staring me in the face barely 2 weeks before the major exams. I was decreed to manage the entire theme based decoration for the House Day of the hostel, a day when we bid farewell to the passing out batch of the hostel. Somehow, I coaxed my batchmates to assist me in proving ourselves to the seniors that we were ready to handle our junior batch, waiting to join us a few months later. After days of pure dedication of some guys who shared my burden, we managed to create a supernatural environment to give a glimpse of the things to come.

Having accomplished my first task, I was already making devious plans for the next year, when reality struck hard, and I ended up faring horribly in the major exams. With no need to wait for the obvious results, I ran away home the very next day after the exams ended. After all, I had to prepare myself to bear the burden of hunting for fresh meat to raise to the sacred altar of the hostel next year.