The Predip

A pre-diploma display, or simply a 'predip' is a display of all the work that a student has done in their time at NID, usually put up in their final semester before commencing the final diploma project (or just 'the dip'). Although it has not been compulsary for many years now, every year some students do still (thankfully) have predip displays.

My first few semesters at NID were spent in self doubt. I was never confident about my work, nor did I believe that I was capable enough. I had wondered many times how I managed to be at a place like NID. The first predip I saw, Ruchita Madhok's I believe, made me determined to be a little more true to my work. I decided then that I'd put up a predip, in the aquarium, and I'd put up everything. Although I continued to go through the remaining months of that year as...er...floaty as I had been until then, looking at that display and some others that followed soon after, did make a difference.

Eventually, something in me woke up, and there was (to me) a perceivable change in the way I looked at my own work and the way I carried myself. The presence of some people who were on campus from that point onwards, helped me even more. I have been lucky enough to be able to involve myself in rgb- India's first inter-college design fest (which took three long years to be realised); as a member of SAC-the Student Activity Council*, and as a member of the NID Filmclub managing committee.

*SAC has since been renamed as the Student Activity Committee.



Looking at 4 years of one's own work immediately puts everything in perspective. I wish I had done so much more in the past few years, but then, the future is what I need to look at now. I have no delusion that my display was amazing or that I have great work. Putting up the display was keeping a promise that I made to myself, and an attempt to keep a dying tradition alive. I hope the coming batches decide to share their work with the community as well.

(There, I have made amends for the retro that I never put up)

Iyer offered to make the poster and headers, "the branding" as he called it. I had 'branded' a shared display that he and Sid had put up, in my third year. A full circle it has come :) Iyer has the poster and all the headers up on his blog.
Posters for Iyer's and Sid's predip display "Something Fishy". Here and here.

Apart from Iyer, Kaveri and Jasjyot, my erstwhile poster-elves made another bling-bling poster.

Here are the rest of the pictures of the display.
Aquarium, NID
9,10,11,12 April

Thank you list, that Mridu and Lee made.
They felt the Italian connection had to be established at some level, hence the 'Grazie'.
Although it just resulted in every visitor to my display asking me "ey what does gray-zee mean?" hehe.

The Furnished Room

Priyanka Chhabra's short fiction film The Furnished Room, based on the story by O.Henry, is being screened as part of the Fokus section at the 38th Sehsuchte International Student Film Festival in Potsdam, Germany. She'd asked me to make her a poster and a postcard that would carry the synopsis of the film.

I've used stills of butterflies that Priyanka made using beads and laminate sheets.

(yes me, and butterflies. They always manage to work their way in. aaah)






You can visit the 38th Sehsuchte International Student Film Festival's website www.sehsuchte.de for the schedule.