Here comes yet another season of hall days ...

With the last week of February in touching distance, the "hall day" mood is already in the air in Madras Christian College. MCC is one of the handful of institutions in India, or perhaps in the world, still following HALL SYSTEM for its residential students. I will talk about hall system, in detail, some other time. For your understanding, hall day could be compared to the annual day of an educational institution... No, you did not get it. For an outsider, it's not easy to visualise it.

Hall day is the annual day of a hall (we've got 5 of them), yet another colourful, enjoyable time for MCCians. Though each hall has unique traditions and mannerisms in organising hall day, the common elements include snacks at 4 O'clock in the evening to begin with, followed by an official ceremony, then cultural programmes, and finally a sumptuous "hall day dinner". The hall day would have a particular theme also. "Looking forward", "enlightenment", "sky is open for those who have wings" etc are some of the hall day themes I can remember. But they were all expressed in Latin, Spanish or some other mysterious language, probably to make them sound larger than life.

Hall day is significant in the sense that it provides the rarest of opportunities when boys have the access to Girls' halls, and vice versa. However if you want to go for a particular hall day, you need to be invited by any of the residents of the given hall. And it is the host who pays for the food of his/her invitees. The official ceremony will have a distinguished alumnus of the hall as chief guest. Talk about reputed alumni? MCC and its residential halls never had a shortfall for them. Hence, hall days usually feature big names, from some or the other sphere of life. Moving on to cultural programmes, there will be skit, hall documentary screening and plenty of songs and dance to colour the evening. The residents of each hall attempt to outshine other halls in every department and to make their hall day the best. The skit is the most anticipated event of the day and it is usually perceived as an opportunity to mock other halls and their residents. Even the wardens of other halls are not spared from this mocking business. Hall day documentary boasts about the achievements of the hall and tells us how they outclassed other halls in the given academic year. It also portrays the emotional attachment that residents share with their hall.

A lot of hard work, sleepless nights, practice and even manual labour go into organising hall days. From pond painting to statue making and decoration, residents take care of everything, and it is indeed a matter of their prestige. Freshers and seniors work their heart out to finish this final lap on a high note. The funnier side of story is that, for many of us it is the hall day that makes us think of cleaning our rooms for the first time in the academic year. Nevertheless the last minute hurry-burry to make our rooms look organised sometimes turns out to be counter-productive also. This year we're beginning with the hall day of Bishop Heber hall. I know they will do whatever it takes to make it count, and so will be the attitude of all hall residents in MCC. However, come March 3^rd, we have got St.Thomas's hall day. As a thomasian, proud and hard core, that's what makes me excited and energetic. Yes, it's time to move ourselves to the top gear for one last time!!!