BITS Alumni's "Rocking" Performance at OASIS-2k8

After 25 years BITS Pilani alumni reunite and Rock On at Unio Mystica OASIS 2008. Oasis is the Annual Cultural Festival @BITS-Pilani.

This year, the festival saw the performance of the unsual band NYOTH. NYOTH is the acronym for "Not Yet Over the Hill". Dont imagine the performers to be young people dressed in Rock-Star attire, with long hair and wild clothes. Infact, the band's average age is around 50's and would have easily fit into the "Corporate bosses" category.

Here goes the description of the event and their scintillating performance

"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.

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 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.

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.

The band was also seen in the MTV- U , the show which covers campus news and festivals in universities across India.

Its great to see the reel ROCK-ON coming true as real ROCK-ON @ BITS-Pilani

BITS-Pilani ROCKS!!!!!!!!! :)