Venue: Talkatora Stadium and other venues
Date: 4-6 March, 2016

Creativity comes in all forms. With new age media, a lot of fresh avenues of creativity are being recognized. Example – traditionally comedy was not considered very creative and no matter how good they were, our Mehmoods and Johny Walkers hardly achieved full stardom. We are not aware of anybody who was inspired by these great talents to take up comedy as profession.

Cut to 2016, there are a host of youngsters aspiring to become stand-up comedy artists. AIB riding on cyber space has reached the heart of the urban youth.

Comedy is just one area. Travel bloggers, food reviewers, lifestyle coaches, graphic designers-the list is endless, they are all storytellers.

“Birds of a feather” – DelhiFunDos with fellow food blogger Karan Marwah from Foodelhi.in at The coalition

Our  “Coalition” story started with an invite in our inbox to the event. On reading up on this, we were frankly confused. But given that AIB, Richa Chaddha and Anurag Kashyap were the panelists, we could see that this could be a “festival of creativity”.

The event panned quite a few venues – Akhshara Theatre, Mtv FLYP and Talkatora Stadium. When we visited Talkatora for the event we saw the entry wing lined with stalls selling handmade goods – clothes, paintings, ornaments and so on. The stuff was arty – kitschy but creative.

We realised in a bit that this also describes the sessions / discussions that we attended. Breaking conventional norms, the speakers were youth mavericks who had turned their passion on its head and made that their vocation. Some of them had arrived but we could see that these guys were not complacent. They were pushing it regularly.

Here’s a lineup of sessions we attended-

Deepak Ramola, Project Fuel – “Let’s happen to this world”

Abish Mathew, Son of Abish – “Mom Dad, I want to be an artist”

“The Story Tellers” – Panelists: Neelesh Misra, Arunabh Kumar, Sanket Avlani, Amitesh Rao and moderated by Rohan Joshi, AIB

“Save The Internet” Panelists: Nikhil Pahwa, Apar Gupta, Raman Jit Singh Chima, Kiran Jonnalagadda and moderated by Supriya Nair, Brown Paper Bag

“Breaking Bollywood” – Panelists: Anurag Kashyap, Richa Chaddha (Fukrey-Masaan fame), Neil Bhoopalam (MTV & NH10 fame), Hussain Dalal (Nestle Ad & Margarita with a Straw) – Moderated by All India Bakchod

The common advise that resonated through all the discussions was that one should start on his / her passion as if there is no tomorrow. At the end of the day, we could see that the predominantly young audience was all pepped up and ready to go. After all, you can’t reach anywhere without moving.