ILLUMINATION

Illumination, popularly known as Illu, is a festival unique to IIT Kharagpur. It is inspired from the day of Diwali (the festival of lights) and is usually held on the day of Diwali itself. It is held as a competition among student halls. As part of the Illumination festival, all halls build vertical panels of bamboo (called Chatais) on which thousands of lamps (diyas) are mounted forming outlines of people or things; illustrating an event, or a place of importance. The chatais may reach a height of 6 metres (20 ft), with nearly 20,000 lighted lamps. The lamps on the chatais are lighted with all other light sources switched off, to showcase the art-panels made by the flickering lamps. On the same day as Illumination, the Rangoli Competition is organised as an inter-hall event. Rangolis of exquisite detail and shading—measuring around 3.5 by 3.5 metres (11 by 11 ft) —are constructed using coloured powders, crushed bangles, and pebbles. Interplay of light and shadow and ambient music are part of the display.


ILLUMINATION CONTEST

The inter-hall illumination contest is held every year on Diwali, the festival of lights. Generally, all the hostels participate in the event. A lot of preparation goes into this event. The idea is to decorate the hall with oil lamps by placing them on wire grids and hanging them from supports so as to create intricate patterns of lights dancing in mid-air.

The designs are usually finalised about ten days before Diwali. The work then starts and a large percentage of the hall's population turns up to put in their bit. The work involves tying wire around diyas (earthen oil lamps) so that they may be hung from grids, placing these diyas on grids and finally filling them with oil. The whole episode of lighting the diyas lasts about ten minutes but the sight is so spectacular and rewarding that it condones all the hard work and considerable amount of money that goes into the effort. The winning hall gets a huge pot of rasgullas (milk dumplings in sugar syrup) to celebrate. After the rasgullas are eaten, the remaining syrup is poured over the unsuspecting hall president's head.

In the pictures you see front views of Azad Hall (Thanks: Vijay Jayachandran) and Patel hall (Thanks: Rajat Bhargava) during illumination and a photograph of the rangoli. Other halls are similarly decked up on this occasion.

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