Boman Irani, at the third season of the youth conference of the Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi

It was a jungle out there in SRCC. No really – they said it themselves. ‘It’s a jungle out there’ was the theme of the third season of the youth conference of the Shri Ram College of Commerce, which was held recently. Celebrities like Boman Irani, Dia Mirza and Papa CJ shared the tales of their struggles with the students, in a bid to ‘inspire’ them, in keeping with the theme of the event.
However, what made the students in the audience cheer the loudest was every time the name ‘Sarthak’ was mentioned on stage. The CBSE topper, who scored an aggregate of 99.6% in the Class XII boards, had almost a dozen FB pages created in his name post the results. Sarthak, however, had said that he did not have an account on the social networking website.
Probably used to the jokes by now, Sarthak sat among the audience, smiling, as performer after performer took digs at him. It started when Sarthak got up to ask a question during Papa CJ’s Q&A round, and the other students started cheering. CJ, on finding out that Sarthak was the guy who scored 99.6% in the Boards, said, “I urge you to join Facebook.” In the middle of the show, he even tossed a lollipop in Sarthak’s direction, and said, “Here’s the remaining 0.4%.” When Simran, another student, asked the comedian for his opinion on sex education in schools and colleges, he said, “I think it’s important. We have a population of over a billion – we obviously love our sex. I think schools and colleges should have sex education. But I also think that you guys shouldn’t depend on others or the government for it. Learning is your responsibility. I think people like Sarthak should discover the internet. Don’t pass the blame on to others.” At that, as all the students turned their heads to look at the topper again and laughed.
Comedy group AIB, who performed for the students on the second day of the event, also had the audience applauding when they cracked jokes on the topper. Comedian Rohan Joshi, no matter what his jokes were about, made it a point to have Sathak in them. “Pata hai CBSE topper hai, but chill bro,” he said while describing how people tend to get too poetic with their appreciation of food. “Matlab kuch bhi bol do, par Sarthak bolte hi yahaan taaliyaan bajti hain,” added AIB’s Tanmay Bhatt.
Virus sang Give Me Some Sunshine! “I generally don’t reply to text messages immediately; I don’t like it. But when this young lady, Kanika Malhotra, who is representing all of you, texted me, the way the message was worded showed that she is from a lovely college. I replied within five minutes of receiving the text, I think. Politeness always impresses me, and that’s why I am here today,” said Boman. In a bid to ‘inspire’ the students, the actor narrated his life story – from being a small shopkeeper to becoming a sports photographer to being the photographer for the boxing world cup to doing Munna Bhai MBBS.
At the end of Boman’s session, the students requested him to spare some time for a Q&A round. However, most of the students just took the mic and asked the actor’s permission to come and hug him! On the students’ demand, Boman narrated the ‘Life is a race’ dialogue from 3 Idiots and sang Give Me Some Sunshine for the students, urging them to sing along with him.
On Day 2, Dia Mirza also took an impromptu ‘acting workshop’ of sorts at the college. — Umang.Aggarwal@timesgroup.com