Tracing the origins of D FEST

Hello friends,

I was purposely waiting for all the celebrations of this edition of D Fest to get over to finally write a report on the celebrations. Many of you are unaware of the origin of D Fest. The first edition took place in 2006 when I was in my First Year of Degree College (FYBA) and had my birthday coming up. That year I had won about 7 inter-collegiate prizes and hadn't given a treat for a single one. Also, it happened to be the first time ever that my birthday was such an anticipated event amongst my college friends (love you all buddies). So on the onset, with the financial blessings of my father who acknowledged me giving a treat as a wrap-up for the entire academic year's prizes as well as my birthday, I started planning on giving the treat but soon realized that there were too many diverse groups of people I was associated with and hence planned to give the treat to different groups on different days. As calculations went on the events would have gone on till Sunday which happened to the 5th of Feb that year. Being a big fan of Abhishek Bachchan (who has his birthday on the 5th); I didn't lose this opportunity to give a new dimension to the whole event starting from my birthday and concluding on AB's. 

But I think the name of the fest originated when I shared about this concept with my buddies - Mayuresh, Sumit and Sanchit. And then it was in a conversation with Sanchit that the name stuck. I think Mayuresh was the only person actively involved in celebrations of all the earlier editions of D Fest i.e. from 2006-2008. Man did I miss Mayu as i was missing all my buddies. But then was delighted to get so many calls wishing me a "happy birthday" on D day. That was a pretty wonderful surprise you all did for me. The huge amount of celebrations haven't just made my day but the whole year itself.

Coming up next is a report on D FEST 2009 - The Fest Goes International

Thank You for the wishes

This post is specially dedicated to all those who took pains and time out to wish me on my birthday. Each and every one of you I am grateful to make D day special for me. Well I didn't expect to get these many wishes especially the phone calls and text messages. With me in the US having a one week old cell phone number, the amount of phone calls and text messages I got was huge. A big surprise, though I had expected a few of you to call as you yourself had declared that you would be giving me a surprise by calling me on my birthday.

Well, this is my small effort to thank all of you for your wishes. The thought of being without friends, family and well wishers during D Fest used to give me nightmares but this birthday was overwhelmed by all of you.

Heartiest Thank You for wishing

Personally -

Jason, Sudarshan, Amit, Romany, AbdulRehman, Krutik, Manik, Shehab, Gajanan, Raju, 

Phone calls -

Prashant Nanaware, Ashwini (Pune), Shradhha (SIES), Mansi, Priyanka, Sneha Iyer, Rhuta, Nisarg, Srimoyee, Archana Pachchi, Ashok Bappa, Ameya Shenoy, Mayuresh, Sai, Vivek Singh, Prasha, Nikhil Vyas, Ekta, Dipti    

Text Messages - 

Rohit, Neha Padwal, Akshata Sawant, Nandan Joshi, Vinaya Sakpal 

E-Mail -

Apeksha, Mandar/Amruta/Gandhali Mangalvedekar

Yahoo - 

Pranay, Amma, Annu, Jyothi mai, preeti kamat, pramod kamat, suhas nawathe, Varsha Jejuri, Jenil, Ashish, SK, Maad, Shwetha Nayak, Vaishali, Sonali/Ketan/Shriya Prabhughate, pratik puranik, Sabarish, Chaitanya Kulkarni, Sandhya, Vidya, sunith Kunder, Sanjana Revankar, Shweta Nayak

 

GTalk -

Kedar Purohit (Mahad), smita, suraaj, Roopa (SIES), Sanket(SIES), Raksha Mallya, Vrushali Tare, Pratik Bulani, Dhairya, Ridhi Mehta, 

FaceBook - 

Nayan, Nitish, Gayatri, Piyu, Vinod, Scellina, Ajay Kumar, Kalyan Sarkar, Rajeev, Maghawry, Asyraff Imah, Aparna Garg, Nomesh, Govind Anand, Ram Prasad Kraleti, Farouk Naseer, Deema Awad, Zei, Khyati Vaidya, Niyati Vaidya, Piyush, Johnathan Young, Joel Brown, Shefali Martins, Amruta Houde, Dev Vashi, Jai Vashi, Shivani Desai, Zara Khan, James Ferrer, Dereck Boggs

Orkut -

Raveen Pai (Baroda), Ravi (Baroda), Rupa Nayak, Aditya (Udupi), Yamini, Sneha, Krupesh, Mariappan (Bangalore), abhilasha (nanded), Siddhi Koli, Ninad Deshpande, Sabarish, Amit Mishra (SIES) , Rahul Goswami, Dolly, Pradnya, janvhi, Bhawsar, Ateeq, Ketan Karande, Sanket, Rajesh Prabhu Salgaonkar, Dinesh Katoch (Atlanta), Sourabh Chakrabarti, Panicker sir, Manish Yadav (UK), Ankur Rege (Aus), Rashmi Mallya, Umesh Kollam (UK), Prajakta Vaidya, Nivesh Kochchal (NYC), Vijay, Gayatri Prabhu,Devshree Ovalekar, Prajakti Pai, Harendra Ranawant (Rajasthan), Dinar Jadhav, Prajakta Bondhe, Aarti Joshi, Shreeji Khedkar, Vinit Goenka, Prajakta Kuwalekar, Mihir Jadhav, Varad, Poorva Dehmukh, Vinit Kotian, Anwita Bhure, Sanket Sawant, Snehal kulkarni, Jayadev Verma, Abhijeet Shinde, Jamuna, Mugdha Deosthali, Neha Gogte, Jesal Patel, Rakhee, anuja (Visions), nrupa,vaidehi, madhura sukhtankar, vaishali, deepali bhide, ashwin (jbk),  Kiran (Nashik), sanchita, afreen, mridula (SIES), bhavik shah, smita chavare, gargi kelkar, sanaa khan, aniket gujarpadhye, rajitha, chinmay (SIES), shraddha dhuri, jinal patel, rahul kotibhaskar, divyakshi, raynor, amit prabhudesai, sonal (Ruparel drama, prerna shrivstava,eshani shevde, neha talwadekar, daskhata, prathmesh gokhale, sachi pandya, ishita sharma, madhura phadke, sabari (Columbia), preeti, umesh chaturvedi (UP), anuja mestry, devasish, sarita, varsha (ruparel), ashish khade, maithili, debjit, devendra shanbaug, nikhil kotian, anuj kotian, sneha pitre, sneha sharma, monalisa ghosh, divya sakpal, mahona sarkar, umang upasham, kaustubh joshi, saneesh bhadbhade, mugdha chaphekar, karishma (SIES), ishaan (NZ), ananth pai, ankur (ruparel), rinkesh dharod, ankur shah, Divya (SIES), devika, abhijit pai, arvind panasare, prakash bewade, mansi (SIES), sayali dongre, pooja khanolkar, kanak, ashish D'Souza, Amit Chaterjee, Ashwin (SIES), Vinisha, Ramesh Deshpande, Rajeev Shrivastav, lalit, mrudula nayak, ankur apte, sanjeev (Georgia), monika (san antonio), sudhir pai (US), ruti dwivedi, milind sahastrabudhe, sujay hande, girija dalvi, charuta bapat, aditya aghor

Belated -

Nadiya, Aws, Wael, Nikhat Sultana, Shraddha Sundaram, Asavari Patankar, Nadiya, Omar, Heena Gokhale, Khaled Trabelsi, Meghna Shah, Ahmed (Bahrain), Ahmed (Egypt), Mohd. Arafat, Mohd. Shalabi, Waheed, Tushar Desai, Haroon Raja (Pakistan), ABHISHEK BACHCHAN

{p.s. If by any chance I have missed any of your names I am really sorry. Please let me know as I won't like to miss any of you. And yes, the people who wishes me through multiple mediums have been mentioned just once and not in all the mediums)

Thanks a ton once again people. The wishes meant a lot to me.

Bye for now,

C ya 

Happy Journey

Gnite

Welcome to 'D' World

Hello everyone it gives me immense joy and pleasure to finally start my blog after years of reserving this blogging space (only yesterday I came across an old email welcoming me to Blogspot. It was dated Aug 2007). I still don't know where to start from. So excuse me for all the unprofessionalism (if you see any) in D World. I do repent for not being confident enough to start blogging when I first came to the US of A and share my experiences. But, this would have deduced D World into an exclusive "Devendra in America" kinda theme which I am happy that it won’t be the case now. 

 

            Writing a blog was a thing which I never considered seriously until suddenly in a very short span of time was asked my many people if I wrote a blog as they were keen on reading what I think on certain subjects/themes/issues or simply share my experiences. This suddenly caught me into a frenzy to start a blog on which I worked for about 2 weeks - finalizing the design, going through some blogs, talking with a couple of friends who are already into blogging and then finally working on the template. I would specially like to mention the name of Chaitanya Kulkarni who I bugged for perhaps a week - asking him to work on the design of D World, making him work on HTML and what not, but finally opted for making my own unique template for D World (hope you like it).

 

            The Left Side of the picture on D World has various names of me given by family, friends, well wishers and/or am known to many by it, while the right side consists of the terms which I use the most or had been phrased by me and a small corner on the top around the alphabet “D” mentions a few things which were specially named by me. Well, that was some insight into what I call D Wall people. Do search for some of D thing which you are familiar with or relate D (that’s me) with.

 

In this whole passion to start a blog, I thought there wouldn't be best time to launch it but co-incide it with celebrations of "D Fest 2009 - The Fest Goes International." Hopefully, I will try my best to update this blog as often as possible (once a week at least). D World is not a "tell all about everyone and everything by Devendra" but thoughts and issues mentioned here are not the only ones which I think about but are the ones which I want to share. And these include things which are right from personal experiences to my thoughts in things happening around me or just might be a reflection of my thoughts.

 

            Last but not least as I make my first post it’s a 100 more days from here to go with regards to my stay in the US. The celebrations for D Fest are on and D World is a part of it. Stay glued for D next post. Until then,

                                                          Bye for now

                                                           C ya

                                                           Happy Journey…cos Lifez one                                          

                                                           Gnite