ehold BOSM - this bustling bacchanal of brawn and
brain alike! I am the bearer of this bourgeoning
brand, and after being beguiled into a barrage of pictures
and other such banal buffoonery, I believe I have the right
to broadcast my beginnings.
I am Baxter. This is my bitter backstory.
Desert eagles like me, very understandably, live in deserts.
For me, it was the Thar and I used to call it home. A
through and through family bird I was – had a wife, a cosy
nest, three chicks on the way, the works. One fine day, my
lady insisted on having a domestic mouse (you know
how females get when they’re brooding). Being the
caring and benevolent bird that I am, I
immediately flew over to the nearest city.
The men there, in their infinite stupidity,
didn’t understand that I was doing
them a favour by getting rid
of vermin; they seemed
more concerned with
capturing me. I was soon
tied down and moved to
the interiors of the city to either a zoo or a
circus. It was hard to say, but I bit a lot of people.
city. Everyone’s fascination compels them to feed you and
this, I found likeable. Nevertheless, these were the people
who had separated me from my wife. Just as I thought this,
I found her in a van belonging to the same company!
They’d be in for a surprise when they got there, but they
had one coming. I attacked the driver and the accomplices
fled. I found the cage and broke it with my beak and cut her
free. She remembers blood on my beak from breaking the
cage; I don’t. Nevertheless, the spirit of breaking continued
in the upwards direction - we broke up.
In my morose state, I flew and flew and hit a clock
tower just as it struck thirteen. I was in BITS Pilani.
The people loved me and accepted me as a
mascot for their huge fest. In my sadness and
misery, this was all I wanted. This, I
decided, was the new life I’d live – the
face of one of the biggest
sports fest in India!”
Baxter’s
Caged life, I tell you, is no life for a soaring eagle, and when
you’re given even a tiny chance to escape, you
wholeheartedly take it. Once, the morons let me out to
exercise my wings and I took full advantage. The man who
had initially caught me, him I wounded with my beak. There
were four others. To my luck, the one manning the door
had forgotten to close it. I gouged his eyes out. One of the
others passed out at this sight (weaklings, I tell you) and yet
another focused his efforts on reviving him. The last one
headed towards the door and I was just able to knock his
head as I dived out. He staggered and fell as I left.
Having escaped and not knowing the way back, I did what
anyone would - I found water. It’s easy to be an eagle in a
Meh.
“What’s wrong? I spent two
days making up this story.”
The beginning is all hunky-dory, bub, but the end… tsk, it needs
more drama, you know? How about this – your wife comes to rescue
you and dies in the process, in your arms.
“You want me to kill off my lovely wife? Why, you…I don’t
even understand why we’re doing this.”
Oh, you know all right. PR, bub. And this generation’s a sucker for
tragedies. Look, the writing’s on the wall. A mascot comes with a tale
– it’s in the contract. Don’t you want your chicks to live a life of
riches? I have other options, you know – Sebastian, the scorpion has a
spicy tale up his sting. So, let’s start over.
“Sigh. Behold BOSM – this bustling bacchanal of brawn
and brain alike…I am Baxter. This is my back story.”
he time has come for champions to rise; to claim their right to the
spoils of victory that they have toiled hard to achieve over the past
few months. To every Ying there is a Yang; balance. While certain colleges
have the privilege of participating in BOSM, one of the most prestigious
sports fests in India, some are not as lucky to enj oy the thrills of the fest
this year.
When asked about which colleges have been blacklisted under BOSM ‘14,
Palak Jain, PCR CoSSAcn, says that typically, every team has a say on
which colleges should be banned but without careful consideration with
regards to the few that do get banned, Pilani would never experience a
sports fest of the magnitude of BOSM at all. There are various reasons a
team or college can get banned, the most common of which is allowing
those students to play who aren’t, in fact, part of a registered college. This
year certain colleges had revoked their right to participate for the next two
or three years (the exact tenure of the ban is still undecided) as they
withdrew from the competition a day before the inauguration. Though
colleges do retract their confirmation statements on rare occasions, there
is only so much the student departments can handle when managing a fest
of this magnitude. Another sure-fire way of getting a three year ban for one’s
college is by indulging in substance abuse on campus (like St Xavier’s College
from Jaipur, who were apprehended for the same last year).
Still more ways to get your college banned?
Try starting a rumble down at the football
ground during your match (yes, sarcasm). ITM
Gurgaon successfully landed themselves on
probation from BOSM for the next few years
for doing just that.
In conclusion, dear sportsmen, tread lightly
during BOSM, for your inane hoopla can
inescapably and sometimes irrevocably turn
your BOSM experience of Grits-Guts-Glory
to Greed-Guilt-Gone.