Students of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) put in six months of effort, and planning for their annual cultural fest, Mood Indigo (MoodI). This year, the theme is ‘Bombay Chronicle’, where the decorations speak about local trains, the dabbawalas, and even the gymkhana walls tell different tales about the city. MoodI is a four day event; this year, it is organised from December 23 to 26, 2016.

Swati Agarwal, and Spandana Byragoni, two researchers at IIT-B, said, “The amount of work these students put in is crazy. They worked continuously for four days and nights straight for MoodI. Going back to work feels refreshed and lively after attending MoodI.”

The 1,000-member team this year includes, 70% first year, 20% second year, 9.8% third year, and 0.2% final year students. Kireeti Akkunuri, a first-year student, said, “In my first semester itself, I got to interact and learn from my seniors. MoodI takes a lot of planning, but first year’s join the team only two weeks in advance.”

Speaking of planning, the MoodI team takes charge of each and every detail throughout the fest, without any involvement from the management. Even after planning every step of every detail, mistakes are bound to happen. There are a number of events spanned across four days, and these events clash, which means the crowd gets distributed. A second-year student, said, “On day 1, one artist was unhappy with the amount of people who turned up for the event. But we couldn’t do anything about it, and the artist had to perform for a small crowd.”

The student, continued, “It is not in our hands to control where the crowd goes. The gymkhana grounds, NCC ground, and the convocation hall attracts maximum number of people.”

A group of three students from the institute came up with an mobile application for MoodI 2016. The selling point of this app is that it uses Google maps for locations inside institute, and they even marked all the restrooms available to public for use. One of the developers, a second-year student Sajal Narang, said, “Last year, so many people asked me directions for the rest room, we decided to make it easier for people to roam around the campus. Also, we had the data, so we made this app, and it has the schedules for all the days, with locations marked, and a reminder for events as well.”

These four days are not easy on students, as their starts at 8am, and they wrap up at 2am. Abhishek Tank, one of the co-ordinator, said, “I am sleep-deprived, I slept at 4am, woke up at 6am, I am food-deprived, my breakfast was a cup of coffee, and now I will directly eat dinner. I have not worked this much for family functions, but I love doing it for MoodI.”