A New Stage

As Oorja, one of the biggest inter-college annual cultural festivals, takes a backseat this year, a string of departmental festivals will keep the tempo up

An annual feature at the Fergusson College, Oorja — the inter-college festival that focuses on dance, dramatics and performing arts — is something that colleges across the city look forward to. The festival, this year, has taken a backseat due to renovation of the 100-year-old amphitheatre, which is a heritage building protected by the Archeological Survey of India.

However, the college, in lieu, is holding a string of intercollegiate festivals, mostly associated with individual departments. The main reason behind this is not just to give students a chance to organise and take part in these festivals, in place of Oorja, but also because also to provide all of them a bigger platform to showcase their talent.

Professor Sushil Dhanmane, cultural head, says that this is the 15th year of their other annual festival Muktachanda, which has also been among one of its main events every year. "We will be promoting it in a big way. The onus of the festival has always been on inviting famous personalities so that students can talk to them and have discussions that will help them excel in their own extra curricular activities."

RG Pardeshi, principal of the college, says that renovations have just begun and will take around four to five months. "Since Oorja is a festival about performing arts, the main requisite for the same is a good stage and good acoustics. We made a conscious decision to ensure that the repairs are done first so that the festival can be held on a bigger scale in the coming year," he adds. Since the amphitheatre is a heritage structure, the permissions for repairs took a long time. "Also, the work needs to be done in a specific period of time in a year according to their guidelines," he says.

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