the monash ball 2008

I wrote this last semester about the Monash Ball for Monga, the issue was never published, so I figure I might as well post it. Enjoy.

Bright colours, lights, music, everything is so fluid, bodies swaying to a rhythm euphoric, this is our pantheon and for a moment we are the Gods, we are Zeus, we are Hera, we are Morpheus, we are Aphrodite, we are rulers. A pantheon designed for us, a pantheon for the people. Our pantheon, the Monash ball, the highlight of the university’s social calendar for us the students of this university, organised with the students in mind, themed, coloured, purposed for a night of memories, good ones at that.

The theme: Mardi gras or Fat Tuesday as the interpretation from French goes. The last day of carnival, a 3 day period before lent, the Christian fasting period similar to Ramadan. As Zhen Yao and Shazeea the MCs for the night quipped it’s not what you get after playing football on a wet field, muddy grass. No definitely not muddy grass, Mardi gras is a celebration of colour and music and dance and so the night was themed that way. The Mardi gras theme was brought to the students in the form of decorations and performances, the performances most of which by our own dance fusion club gave you a taste for the flair of a culture alien to us. A fashion show to highlight the sensual styles of carnival further opened eyes to a world far removed from our own. All of it being very pleasing.

The man behind it all, Manil De Run the activities chairperson. This writer knows firsthand the amount of planning that went into the ball. Preparations were being made as early as June and months of planning culminated into a night of brilliance.

Though what made the night were not the decorations or the music or the theme. The people, the Gods of this pantheon made the night. Their presence made the night, for without them all we would have had was an empty ballroom with pretty lights. Everyone was dressed to kill; the men looked sharp in their suits and the women enticing in their dresses. Every colour of the rainbow was represented in a glory and grace splendid. The students of Monash had never looked more beautiful.

When the dance floor opened, there we were dancing the night away. This writer had the privilege of rocking out the night on the dance floor with a very beautiful woman, one who knew how to sway her hips to the beat. And the scene he saw before his eyes was being played out across the dance floor. Boys and girls were dancing the night away, beautiful in their own right, graceful in their sway.

A night of memories, indeed memories were made with every conversation, with every passing smile, memories were made at the tables the students sat at and memories were made in the sway of the bodies on the dance floor. Memories were what the night was designed for and memories it gave you.

Although the night existed only for a moment and faded from the corporeal world, as time ever progressing forward took it from us, it continues to live on in our minds and our hearts with the memories we took from it. To quote a song by Eve6, “here is to the night we felt alive” and alive we were, we the Gods of this pantheon.