DePP

Last year, I was among the youngest at BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus, being in the first year. Obviously, a lot of us were put at ease by our very friendly (read: "Come to my room in 30 minutes or you'll be forced to hide for the rest of your college life!") seniors in a new environment. :-P Everything was pretty different, but something that particularly caught my eye was the multitude of BITS T-shirts. Some screamed choice words in Latin; while others showed the saga of BH-8 (BITSians will know what I’m talking about).


However, a particular tee stood out, which said Quark ’07-Be Fundamental (pun\m/) But then what was Quark? Quark is our Technical festival and quintessential for a premier Institute like BITS. Despite our campus being only three years old, Quark ’07 was a hit, with difficult competitions, amazing laser shows and yes, the funda-mental t-shirt.


When we came, preparation for Quark’08 was well under way. We were drawn into the ‘quarkmire’, and there was no looking back. In the first sem itself, DePP (then called the Publicity Club or more affectionately ‘Pub’) got busy with making Quark logos, posters and banners to be put up in colleges across India. This was the first time that Quark was attempting to go truly national.


However, I realized the spirit of Quark truly arrived when I walked down my corridor one day, and saw my friends trying to make a bot. Five hours, a nasty burn, and a million how-the-hell-do-you-make-a-robot calls to seniors later, they were proud of their accomplishment as the robot finally got an earthly body. Quark’08, with the tagline ‘Engineering Perfection’, and the unofficially-named robot mascot Ob became a phenomenon in campus. Even The sleeping BITSians who were taking the advantages of a 3-day holiday woke up. It was the best three days in BITS ever. There was lots of yummilicious food in the stalls (I have a predilection to barf-ka-golas, and subsequently sore throats).


Coming to participation now. We had participation from all over India, from Goa, Maharashtra, AP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, BITS-Pilani and BITS-Dubai as well. The competitors were sporting and our thanks to them for revelling in the Spirit of Quark!


Events from every science and engineering field formed the crux of Quark and they were well-fought-out contests. But the biggest event in Quark was MATKA, the gaming event. It was huge, and every gamer decided to engage in the fight for supreme glory. Okay, maybe not supreme glory, but Rs.30,000 is a nice incentive.
Apart from these, we had great workshops, including an aeromodelling workshop, a telescope making workshop by IUCAA Pune , and a finance workshop by Reuters. Several premier companies like Bosch, Red Hat, and Schlumberger set up their stalls and conducted workshops and games for us. Nope, I’m not doing publicity, just telling ze truth.


But what is a good fest without Special nights? Entitled Aurora- we had three days of beautiful performances. There were great performances by the Drama Club, The Music Club and the Rock Club. But The performance which took our breath away was by Feeding the Fish. They are a professional group of jugglers who combine, dance, music and specially programmed props to create the most spellbinding show ever. I could find very few words to describe it, but here’s what a friend said- “The show was freaking awesome. I will spend my whole life doing nothing but watch this show.”


On the whole, Quark’08 was exhilarating. It was the first time I had witnessed such a fest, and it was great. Though the aspect of Test-2 coming up a week after Quark was not really appealing,(and not good for my already stellar CGPA), I did have fun, and a lot of golas, and food, and work…
Preparations for Quark’09 have already started now. All the Depts have started their work, and we already have a tagline (Technical Renaissance) and a cute li’l mascot (Q-BOT). Registrations are open at the QUARK website: http://www.bits-quark.org/


Now for the hell load of work to come our way….*runs*


Shalini