Guru & Shishya

Year: 2005

Location: Christ College, Bangalore

Event: Ushus, the biggest inter-university competition in MBA programme at Christ

I was a junior first-year MBA student and was part of one of the committees formed for the event. All juniors were to support seniors who were in-charge of one or other committees. Discussions were at its peak one day when, Seby, one of my seniors called me aside and said he had a task for me.

He wanted me to click some photos during the event. I liked photography and I immediately agreed. Little did I know that I was signing up for something which would become part of the history of Christ College for the originality of the idea!

Remember, we were talking about an event that happened more than two decades ago when streaming videos were unheard of and live telecasting was limited to cricket matches that you watched on TV. With that as the background, what Seby was planning was something I had never heard of before. Let us just say, he was at his creative best!

MBA programme was housed in one of the biggest blocks in the beautiful campus of Christ College, Bangalore. There was a large reception area when you entered the block from the southern side of the building. He wanted to utilize one corner of the reception to setup two laptops. One of them was to be connected to a projector which will be displaying the output on a screen prominently placed at the reception so that everyone who passed-by would pause for a moment and noticed what was displayed. The second laptop was to be used for his genius idea to work!

Those were the days when we had point-and-shoot cameras which was the previous avatar of the modern day DSLR cameras. Though mobile phones with cameras were available in the market, it was yet to be common among the public. For instance, I used a push-button phone then, a Nokia 1100. The biggest luxury that phone had was a light switch that you could turn on and off as required. All of that now feel like a scene from a pre-historic movie!

Seby laid down his plan. The event being an inter-university competition for MBA students, there were multiple venues across two buildings spanning many floors, where teams competed to become the best management brains of the show. Events happened simultaneously and it would be practically impossible to capture photos of everything at once.

The task was clearly cut out for me. Seby wanted me to dash across the venues throughout the day, click the events in progress and run back to the reception where he worked on the two laptops. As soon as I was at the reception, he replaced the memory card on my camera with a blank one and off I went to the next venue to capture more moments.

While I ran back for further shots, Seby would copy the pictures from my last memory card to the laptop he worked on. He then edited them and added the event name and even gave some random captions for some. Those edited photos went to the second laptop which was continuously connected to the projector that displayed the photos of the events, almost on a near real-time basis.

The wonderful experience about the whole show was manifested when an event got over and participants reported to the reception for the next directions. As they walked down the stairs, they saw themselves in action on a projector screen, at an event they just participated in.

The reception area which was already abuzz with activities became one of the major attractions where practically we had a live show running! It was as though someone broadcasted the whole event via a satellite! Very few who stood there at the reception knew that Seby and I were the satellites that revolved around the Christ campus along with the broadcast station wonderfully managed from the reception itself.

Needless to say, the idea was a super hit!

At the end of a successful event, during a wash-up session, Ms Sharon, our faculty coordinator of Ushus, appreciated both of us for a beautifully executed idea.

Ma’am also gave us a title – Guru & Shishya!

Tail End: A relationship that started more than two decades ago, still goes strong, with Seby and I keeping in touch and to make it even better, our families also connect well. Certain bonds are meant to last a lifetime!