Salt Lake School ends the year on a high note what with the grand success of its annual fest. The CA Block-based school celebrated Rhapsody on December 9 and 10, in association with Young Metro. 

The theme for the fest and exhibition, that was held across classrooms, was “Feed the Planet: Celebrating the International Year of Pulses — Food for Thought”. Prof Ajit Kumar Mohanty, director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, had come to inaugurate the event. 

Win some, lose some
Day One began with the group song competition where the nightingales of the host school mesmerised the audience with folk-based harvesters' songs. 

The drama competition too had budding playwrights write original scripts on the theme of “food adulteration”. The Salt Lake School (SLS) team won the loudest applause for their generous use of sarcasm and humour in their skit and Tamojit Misra was adjudged best actor. 

The band competition was centred around paying tribute to Kishore Kumar and every team delivered power-packed performances. Again SLS’s Team A stole the show. “This team set the bar very high with the fusion of a slow romantic song Meri bheegi bheegi si and the fast and funky Raafta raafta,” said judge Pranam Roy, who is an emcee and quiz master. 

But our winning streak was interrupted by Hariyana Vidya Mandir (HVM), who pushed us to second place in the fashion show. HVM stunned the audience with their depiction of traditional attire of the harvesters around of the world. 
The day was brought to an end by the phenomenal performance by folk band Dohar, featuring singer Kalika Prasad Bhattacharya.

Ads, films ’n’ dances
Day Two began with the much-awaited Ad-Spoof, where the participants had to advertise products with a twist of humour. The team from National English School (NES) parodied Dove soap and came second whereas the two SLS teams advertised Colgate toothpaste and Goodknight mosquito repellent. The latter won after a side-splitting act. 

“It was great fun watching the ads we see on TV but with a hilarious twist,” said Suryalok Chongdar, a Class XI student in the audience. 

The topic for the videography contest was “Wastage of food during lunch breaks” and the host school not only won, but its director Subhrajit Mondol impressed the judge (short filmmaker Arnab Ray) enough to win a chance at assisting him on a real shoot! National English School was the runner-up. 

In what must be a first in the history of our fest, the quiz competition witnessed a five-round tie-breaker! WWA Cossipore English School and SLS’s senior team both fought till the end and had to ultimately be made joint winners. 

The Medley included song-based dumb charades and antakshri-like games and HVM won it, followed by SLS. The senior choreographic dance competition, held in the evening, was a feast for the eyes. HVM won yet while our Team A came a close second. 

Television and film artist Rupanjana Mitra graced the occasion too and handed over some prizes to event winners.
Rhapsody was wrapped up with the performance of an instrumental band The Radical Array Project- Trap. This band is special to the school as its members are all ex-students and had started off by competing right here at Rhapsody 2010! 
They band played popular tunes from Pirates of the Caribbean, Feluda movies, Game of Thrones and the like. Last but not the least, the students of SLS performed a dance for their closing ceremony. And now the city school circuit begins another year’s wait for Rhapsody next year.

— Suchintan Das,
Class XI, Salt Lake School