BHAV-SPANDAN YOUTH FESTIVAL | 2024

Bhav-spandan Youth Festival 2024

Greetings! As per the tradition of every year, this year's Youth Festival was held in Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University from the 17th to the 19th of October, starting with Kalayarta and concluding with the closing ceremony. This year, it was named the Bhav-spandan Youth Festival. This blog post captures my experience participating in various events and competitions, as well as attending my friend's competitions to cheer them up.

This year’s Youth Festival felt a bit hasty, with many competitions happening simultaneously. Due to this clash in timing, we were not able to attend all the events in person, especially theatrical ones like Mime, Skit, and Akanki. However, the festival was superbly managed, including efficient water and food arrangements, and the university even provided accommodation for daily commuters. Despite the excellent management, the time span was shorter compared to the previous youth festival. It's also worth noting that there was less participation in group competitions this year, with more students opting to enroll in individual events such as elocution, clay modeling, mono acting, on-the-spot painting, photography, and cartooning.

I participated in three events, all of them were group based, including Kalayatra, the Quiz competition, and Installation (creating the best from waste – Sthapankala). Every year, the Youth Festival kicks off with the Kalayatra competition, where various colleges and departments present different social themes in groups. Our theme was to represent the "Condition of Education" in present times, focusing on how students are negatively influenced by social media, reels, TikTok, and the increasing use of drugs among teenagers, which poses a threat to quality education. The Kalayatra started from Shamaldas Arts College and ended at Swaminarayan College. The themes of other colleges largely addressed contemporary issues like women's safety and rape.

The next day, various competitions began following the opening ceremony, where Kusum Sarvaiya and Jay Vaghani were part of the prayer group, and the formal welcoming of guests took place. Quiz and Mimicry were the first competitions. My classmate Divya Jadav, my junior Rutvi Pal, and I participated in the Quiz competition. This year's quiz wasn’t too difficult, but unfortunately, we couldn’t qualify or secure a rank. There were 25 questions, mostly about current affairs, with a few related to the constitution. Each correct answer earned 2 marks, while a wrong answer cost 1 mark. The top five teams would qualify for the next round.

Later that evening, I had my other group event, Installation. Yashraj Sodha, Rajdeep Bavaliya, Parthiv Solanki, and I participated. This was my first time participating in this event, and we had a lot of fun while learning. We had to collect materials that were no longer in use or considered waste and create something meaningful from them.

Here Are the List of Things: નારિયેળ ના છલા, કોથળા, Cardboard, Card sheet,

Newspaper, Magazine, Plastic Bottles (every size), Clothes, Dupatta, Sari, Tapes, Stepler, Glue, Needle Threads, 'Matlu' , Tel no Dabbo, Sticks( nani moti), Ball, Jewellery, Frames, થર્મોકોલ, પ્લાસ્ટી ડબ્બો, સાવરણી, લોખંડના તાર, ઘાસ નો પૂડો.

Themes of Installation

Worshipping (Pooja)

Happiness Emotion

Accident

This was our final composition, and we chose the theme of "accident." Our purpose was straightforward. First, we planned out what we needed to do and divided the tasks. As you can see in the picture, we attempted to create a train, and on the railway line, there are two people standing, one male and one female. This is an AI operated automatic train, and the accident is inevitable. It is up to the train to decide whom to kill and whom to save. Our concept was that the train would choose to kill the female and save the male. In this way, we aimed to represent gender bias in AI.

What was the error then? According to the judges, we were unable to do justice in the making of the automatic AI train. It didn’t even much resemble a train, as we had spent too much time thinking rather than taking action. Another issue was that the message of the artwork or installation should be immediately clear to the viewers at first glance. There’s no room for interpretation or confusion, but unfortunately, after seeing our composition, visitors were confused and couldn’t understand what we had made.

The other participants' structures were very uniquely crafted and executed. Most of them focused on themes like Pooja and Accident.

As you can see from above pictures the themes are clear. Students from Gujarati Department secured the first rank in this competition. They have constructed the idol of deity Ganesh, and the detailing was commendable.

My Experience/Themes in Dramatic Events

Theatre events are the heart of the Youth Festival, and many people from outside the university also attend these performances. There are mainly four types of drama events held at the festival: One-Act Play, Skit, Mono Acting, and Pantomime.

The titles of the various One-Act Plays were Jamni, Sukh-Dukh na Sathi (both based on Pannalal Patel's short story), Kariyavar, Kali – Ek Pavitra Rang, Aykha ni Chopat, and Karna.

This year's One-Act Plays covered mixed themes such as sentimentalism (in Jamni and Sukh-Dukh na Sathi), tragedy (Karna, Aykha ni Chopat), realism (Kali – Ek Pavitra Rang), and mythology in Karna. Many props were used in these plays, and the lighting and background music enhanced the performances.

Aykhani Chopat

The play's story was simple and clear, one brother kills his own brother for his wife. The sister-in-law, unaware of the truth, begins making preparations to marry him for the sake of her child. Throughout the play, the game of Chopat is significant and serves as the objective correlative of the story. Destiny is playing a game with the characters' lives, reflecting the brother's cunning plan for cold-blooded murder. It’s only at the end of the play that anagnorisis (the sudden discovery of the truth) occurs, when the sister-in-law realizes that her brother-in-law killed her husband.

Karna

We recently studied the play The Curse of Karna by T. P. Kailasam, which presents the story of the Mahabharata from Karna's perspective. The play reveals how Karna's life was much like a curse, as he suffered at the hands of various characters, including the Gods. This play beautifully captures the tragedy of Karna, using lighting and a flashback narrative technique where a young Karna appears on stage to express his inner agony to Kunti, after she abandoned him and threw him into the river Ganga. The stage was also creatively used by the actors to depict the emotional distance between Karna and his mother, Kunti.

Skit

After many years, our department participated in the skit competition. The major themes in the skit were corruption, women’s safety, and comedy. Krupali Belam, Pallavi Parmar, Kusum Sarvaiya, Rutvi Pal, Smruti Vadher, and Bhumi Mahida participated in this event, while Jay Solanki was backstage providing tabla beats. The script was prepared under the guidance of Alpa Ponda ma'am. The skit addressed various contemporary issues such as the exploitation of corporate employees, and corruption in both politics and education.

Other Fine Arts Events

This section includes events like cartooning (Participant Riya Bhatt), painting( Participant Tanvi Mehra), collage (Participant- Reshma Bilakhiya), poster making (Participant- Sanket), clay-modelling(Participant- Bhumiba Gohil), and installation.

Cartooning

(By Riya Bhatt)

Paintings

Topics: College Campus, Garden, and Festival

Clay Modelling

(By Bhumiba Gohil)

Paper Collage

Topics: Fish Tank, Dancer and Portrait

Poster Making

Almost every poster incorporated the theme of ecocriticism, global warming, and tree plantation. And it is important to grow awareness about such topics in the minds of youth so that they can understand the worth of environment and ecology for sustainable green future.

Rangoli

Elocution

The topics for the elocution competition were: Mara Sapna nu Gujarat Kevu, Exams Every Day, Suicide: Is It the Final Solution?, India's Foreign Policy and Its Impact, and What If the Internet Disappeared? Many students chose the topics of suicide and Mara Sapna nu Gujarat. Dhatri Parmar also delivered her speech on the topic of suicide.

Here you can watch Dhatri's speech

This year students were very enthusiastic about all the events and competitions. We got substantial amount of participation this year in the youth festival from the Department of English. As many as twenty four students were participated in various eighteen competitions. But sadly this time we were not able to secure any rank. I am hopeful that next year our juniors will secure more medals.

Thank you.