Time for Rethink

Mulling over when to hold the Annual Day function

A meeting has been called for tomorrow to decide on whether it would be possible to hold our Annual Day function within the next couple of weeks – preferably on March 2 or 9. The other option is to keep it on hold till September-October, i.e. after the monsoon.
Barely two days back, a decision was taken (ref last post) to put the event on the back burner in deference to the 40 soldiers who lost their lives in the Pulwama terror attack last week. The atmosphere is not conducive for holding our function in the Garden, it was stated.
Bijoy Gupta was however, not convinced by this reasoning. So yesterday afternoon, he met up with Hemant Nair of

Shekhawat was dissuaded from
hosting a party tomorrow

the neighboring Celebration Club and was told that we could as well go ahead with our programme, postpone or cancel it – the decision is entirely ours.
“Nair did not say why his Musical Programme, slated for the same day (February 23), had to be dropped,” Gupta reported. “But from what I gather from my friends in the Garden, no one would have the guts to object to our holding the programme. We have nothing to fear.”
Oddly enough, all those who voted for a postponement two days back – including Lt Col Angad Singh, Shekhawat and Banoo Apa – are now agreeable to having the function in the next two weeks. Only Yusuf Rassiwala wanted it to be deferred beyond the monsoon.
Siba Prasad Maitra suggested we all think things over and decide tomorrow on a possible date for reviving the function. Quite clearly, nobody wants the time and effort – not to mention the money – hitherto spent on the preparations to go waste.
A reasonable way to resolve this issue is to own up if we are adequately prepared for staging the function. Should at least the key actors of our skits have memorized their lines by now, the issue is settled. The rest (movement, diction, emoting, etc.) can be managed in two weeks. But if you are still grossly under-prepared and tend to fumble over your lines, even now, it’s a lost case. We are unnecessarily putting the cart before the horse.