Students at a rangoli-making contest at St Xavier’s College. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Jan. 29: Though the shouts were for Atif, it was Xavier student Adarsh Kumar a.k.a. Atif, who stole the show at the Xavierotsav’07.

The two-day long St Xavier’s College fest was inaugurated today by college principal Father Tete and Rector Father Nabor.

For those uninitiated Atif Aslam is the Pakistan-born singer and the voice behind Tere Bin and Woh Lamhe. And for the non-Xavier students Adarsh is called Atif for his uncanny resemblance (both physical and musical) with the Pakistan-born singer. It was all such typical college fun and jokes that lend an oomph to the affair.

The college premise was chock-a-block with participants all lining up for extempore, debate and creative-writing competition, which saw the maximum number of participants. Judges for the English extempore were Professor Juhi Bhengra and Sumana Ghosh of the English department.

The most awaited event this year at the fest was the “Vocxa” or the voice of St Xavier’s. More than 100 hopefuls lined up for the auditions, out of which only 18 were selected for the final. Madhusudan Ganguly, Amit Das and Jharna Mukherjee, all singers and musicians of repute , were especially invited to judge the event. True to a “television format” the singers themselves requested for the audiences’ vote after each performance. In fact, the results of this “talent”-hunt will depend more on audiences’ votes than anything else. But for those who were willing to vote a sum of Rupee 1 was the voter’s fee. The final results will be declared tomorrow at the second day of Xavierotsav, but for now the volunteers swore than more than 5,000 votes had been cast.

The Informalz (a round) started at the college ground with a rock show where three bands — Genesis, Disturbed, Gravity and a guest band from RIMS called Metal Bugs — rocked the event. The Informalz later turned into an open dancing ground with students dancing to Sadri numbers.

Rageshree Dasgupta, the college general secretary said: “We have taken special care this year to ensure that it’s a stupendous success. The security is tighter, and we have hired security personnel from outside to man the affairs.”