DAY I
Ads, Video booths, Sms contests .. were enough to light the fire in many a youth .. to assemble at Mayor Ramanathan Chettiyar Centre, as early as 4:00 in the Morning !!!!! Wee hours !!!(considering the whole city is asleep). Scheduled to begin by 8:00 AM, the crowd was let in only at that time ... but it was way better, reaching there before 6:00 AM, or the crowd'd have been haunting. There were separate queue's for the video-booth-selected contestants and the CD-selected ones(me too!!!!!) and as usual, a general queue, as large as 1500... intimidating I tell you !Chinmayi arrived pretty late(and I guess it was the reason we had to wait near the barricades for ages ! whew !!)..and a queue till the curve of the Main road(as far as the eyes see)... A MEGA EVENT !!!!! ... and going by the looks of it, Scary !!!! So many people sing ??????????????????!!!! But this was the most lovely time .. what with pre-professional singers (Ajesh, Prasanna, Vj) in the gang !!!!! Orey brighas only ! :P
Well, Mr. Sun was the only troublesome person, until the cameramen came along ! How I loathe pretending we're all happy and non-tensed, in front of the camera ?! Every movement is shot/video-ed. And a celebrity was in sight too, Actor Jeeva .. absolutely unnecessary if you ask me...but who asks ! There were hardly people noticing him(Karthi should act I guess..then Jeeva will have a complex :P) Thank God he left !!!!!!! and sooner than we realised, we were walking up the stairs to register ourselves (I was roll 1 :P...aka contestant 007 [Samma number]) We were given this nice tag
to pin onto ourselves, and went up, to the second floor, where all participants had to assemble! The capacity was around 1000, and another roaring crowd was waiting down to register themselves, while the hall was already full !!!! Terrific or Terrible, I can't decide !A wait for eternity I thought, till it was hard to believe that we(the first few contestants) were actually called to occupy the first row. A week of Cold-and-cough-control looked meek, with so many participants around. Chewing of nails, Prayers to the Almighty, rehearses, corrections, discussions in whispers and all other signs of nervousness within a room created an even more tensed atmosphere. And ... BANG!!!! Some of us were actually walking in for the auditions ! (neku konjam bhayam) Ours was Batch 1 .. now I realise, going early is not everything ! People make decisions with you as the base !!!! Our judges were Deepan Chakravarthy and Sunitha Sarathy !!!!!! They seemed sweet, until .................
Apparently, we realised that there was going to be one judge per contestant. (That sounded less scary, though, who knows which one is the beast?!?!). Contestant 001 goes in, to Deepan's arena(Battlesome: :P) BEEP !!!!! went the Green light !!!!!! How happy the contestant was !!!! ... This was an ice breaker I guess, for it seemed to ease down my apprehensions about the competition !!!!! And this chain of Red lights continued .. till roll 006 !!! Next's me !!!!!! Deepan's sweet !! He eases you down a bit before you begin !!! A few questions here and there about music and my cold (lol!!), I finally began with 'Munbe' ... and I realised, the judge was bending down rasichifying !!! Aha !!!! BEEEEEP !!!!!!!! Greeeeeeeen !!!!!!! Yo !!!!!!! It was a happy moment !!!!! A jumping ME came out, and this guy from The Hindu was interviewing me !!!! (yeah .. vekkams !) And the cameraman asked me to tell the world, over-the-mike, in-front-of-the-camera :P as to what happened inside !
Breakfast at 5 in the morning, and a few pieces of bread here and there kept me going !!!!!
NOT ANY MORE ! This nice little friend of mine bought me food ... how generous !!!!! :P
and after friends too got selected, we headed for the best place ever ,.... HOME !!!!!! One moment I'm lying on the bed, and the next moment, Snoring !!!!!!!!!!! Selected participants had to make it at 9:00 AM, at the same venue, on Monday !!!! :)
