It was India’s biggest college festival — headlined by international rock band Porcupine Tree — and two of Bollywood’s celebrated composers had confirmed their performance. But three days before
Mood Indigo
, IIT Mumbai’s national level annual festival, Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani opted out of performing, alleging PR mismanagement. “We’re not doing
Mood Indigo
. They messed up on the PR,” Dadlani tweeted on his Twitter account, V1SH4L on December 21. The next day, he confirmed that the duo has pulled out, citing “poor management” as the reason.The students then roped in Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, and the concert, scheduled for December 24, went off smoothly.
But the IIT students and faculty aren’t pleased with Dadlani’s comments. They say that the entire incident seemed like an excuse and that Vishal-Shekhar may have had another concert, where they were getting more money. Ishank Gupta, coordinator of
Mood Indigo
said, “We had six hoardings, four ads on buses, presence in Baristas and McDonalds outlets across the city, presence on more than a 1,000 out of home media screens, radio coverage for 10 days and posters in 3,500 colleges across the country, involving Vishal-Shekhar exclusively.
How can they still complain about the PR?” Gupta said that the duo’s manager wanted a full page article in newspapers after the entire publicity campaign, two days before the festival, and pulled out when that didn’t happen. “Abhishek (the manager) insisted on an article despite so much publicity. When we explained to him that we don’t own city newspapers, he said that he was keeping half our money as a cancellation fee.”
How can they still complain about the PR?” Gupta said that the duo’s manager wanted a full page article in newspapers after the entire publicity campaign, two days before the festival, and pulled out when that didn’t happen. “Abhishek (the manager) insisted on an article despite so much publicity. When we explained to him that we don’t own city newspapers, he said that he was keeping half our money as a cancellation fee.”
“The manager eventually returned the money but said he was doing a favour by doing so,” said Gupta.
Professor P Gopalan, Dean of Students Affairs at IIT Mumbai, said, “They had a set of expectations which were not a part of our MoU with them.” Vishal and Shekhar couldn’t be contacted, despite repeated attempts for their reaction to the charges.