After 25 years BITS Pilani alumni reunite and Rock On at Unio Mystica OASIS 2008

If you did not read this in main stream media, then it may be that they do not believe in Victor Hugo quote “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

These alumni of BITS Pilani who are dreamers, performers and achievers with Never Say Die attitude and Hunger for the Impossible are undoubtedly torch bearers of Brand BITS Pilani.

These proud to be BITSians with age hovering around 50 draw their inspiration from Jethro Tull Lyric You are never too old to Rock'n'Roll if you are too young to die. One wonders if any such thing could have ever happened in the alumni history of any other institution!

Big music bands which include the Beatles, Pink Floyd, ABBA, the Doors etc went on to hit the peak and the team broke for some reason or other and the rumors that they would unite and perform together have become folklore.

Recently the Bollywood movie Rock On directed by Abhishek Kapoor, produced by Ritesh Sidwani and Farhan Akhtar under the banner of Excel Entertainment presented by Big Pictures was a big time hit and made musical waves all over. The music for the film was by Shankar Ehsaan Loy and the trendy lyrics by Javed Akhtar. The story of the film is about Aditya (Farhan Akhtar), Joe (Arjun Rampal), Kedar Zaveri the Killer Drummer (Purab Kohli), Rob Nancy (Luke Kenny) who were college mates with love for music, end up forming a band Magik, make music for a while, have ego trips and break up. The four of them respectively were the mind, the will, the heart and soul of the Magik band. After several years, Aditya’s wife Sakshi played by Prachi Desai puts her best of histrionic efforts to reunite the Magik Band and they indeed unite and go on to hit the music world all over again. That was typical bollywood pulp and reel fiction and its time to know about some real music and facts in this context.

The only thing common among L S Ganesh, Vijay Athreye, Sunil Nanda , Raju Varghese , Rahul Chettri, Prdeep Viswanathan, Shalabh Ahuja and Sanjeev Punj is that during the 70s they were all students of Birla Institute of Technology and Science – BITS Pilani Rajasthan which is one among the top ranking universities in India today. They were admitted and graduated in different years, studied different degrees, stayed in different hostels, took up different careers, went to different cities, different countries but yet one thing common for them was that they had passion for music which they had played together on different occasions in the auditorium of the Institute during their student years at Pilani.

After 25years, Anita wife of Sunil Nanda discovers the husband’s passion for music and played a key role in bringing some of the friends together and made them play music for the Silver Jubilee Reunion of 1976-81 batch of BITS Pilani at the auditorium of the Institute in 2006. Now that Spark had been lit by Anita, Sunil became the torch bearer egged by Vice President BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA) to re form alumni band which took the name Not Yet Over The Hill (NYOTH) to re create all over again the music magic in them. The marathon project for which most interactions went through emails and e meetings took shape and the friends reunited although they never split like the reel story Rock On.

On 20 October 2008, the passion packed team LS Ganesh and Vijay Athrey (Vocals), Pradeep Viswanathan and Sunil Nanda (Bass), Rahul Chettri and Raju Varghese (Lead), Sanjeev Punj and Shalabh Ahuja (Drums) landed up at Pilani and after the scintillating start to OASIS which is one among the top ranked college fests in India today literally stormed the stage. The team also included Anirudh Punj son of Sanjeev Punj on drums. Gautam De (Goat) played the managerial role for the band's pilani visit.

They played songs like Roadhouse Blues, Born to be Wild, Uriah Heep Stealin’, Wizard, Mr Fantasy, John Barleycon, Proud Mary, Deep Blue Sea, Brain Damage, For what it is worth, Down by the River, Just a song and Hey Jude.

With his talented voice and superb guitar playing LS Ganesh presently Management Professor at IIT Madras enchanted the youngsters from BITS and colleges across the country who had converged at Pilani for the annual pilgrimage Oasis. Rahul Chettri was awesome with his great charisma enhanced by his shiny bald head on stage. Pradeep had the crowd eating out of his hands with his imaginative lead. Raju and Sunil Nanda played some deeply resounding bass. Vijay had a good haunting voice all through and sang with ease as if he was in his teens. Sanjeev was terrific on drums and his son Anirudh who played the drums for Hey Jude was superb. Ganesh ended the session with his famous desi song about Let Me tell you how this fellow fell in Love. After reading this, it’s for sure IIT Madras would love to see their beloved management guru Prof LS Ganesh doing case studies on magic of music.

When NYOTH finished their performance, the Richter scale measured over 8 in the jam packed auditorium of the Institute to trigger a well deserved tsunami of applause. The audience glided out humming Uriah Heep’s Sunrise and the new day breaking through. For more details about the NYOTH band contact Proud to be BITSian Sunil Nanda sunil_nanda_blr@yahoo.com

BITS Pilani Rajasthan which has the reputation of pioneering the online examinations for admissions through the path breaking BITSAT and setting a bench mark in industry university collaborations is one among the top ranking universities towering above the rest in various best college surveys in India today. BITS offers degrees in various disciplines presently at Pilani, Dubai, Goa and Hyderabad campuses apart from an array of work integrated learning programmes for HRD of a vast spectrum of Indian corporates. The alumni of the Institute who are Proud to be BITSians peaking with Passion Quotient for Alma mater and spread across the globe from Australia to America are the true ambassadors of Brand BITS Pilani.

Dr BR Natarajan
Vice President BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA)
Professor BITS Pilani (Rajasthan) 333031 India
Phone 91-1596-242210
Fax 91-1596-244183
Email brnt@bits-pilani.ac.in
http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in

This release was published on openPR.