When approached for an interview for the English press, Hari Subramanian, the coordinator of the Department of Sounds, was seen busy contemplating on the issue of recruiting at least one first year before oasis. For those unaware, the members of Department of Sounds like to call themselves the team responsible for bringing every note sung, every beat played and every dialogue rendered on-stage to the ears of the audience. Perhaps a few of us know better.

“We do not require any preparation before the fest as all our work is done during the events,” Hari explained. “The department will be handling the sound systems for all the student performances at the central Auditorium, the FD II QT and the NAB Audi. We also work for Music Night, Gurukul Night and a few other events in the auditorium.”

Hari quoted the relatively heavy technical aspect of their work as one reason for their reluctance in recruiting more than three every batch. “This way, the knowledge is passed on from senior to junior more effectively. Over time, the juniors start reading up and make changes to the systems”.

The sound systems currently being used in BITS Pilani are very old and not up to the mark, according to Hari. This causes the sound to be of low quality, an issue for which the Sounds team is often wrongly blamed. Another problem faced by Sounds is the power supply. “The power system that BITS Pilani is using is not capable of giving a standard power supply during the day. So there are multiple power surges which disrupt our work,” Hari elucidated, recollecting the issues the department faced during last year’s Oasis.

“Sounds is a department that’s going to be setting up things. We do not have a say on what kind of events are going to be organised. With respect to that, I do believe that departments need to have some kind of synergy in order to make Oasis better” said Hari who is confident that his department will be able to get their work done without too many glitches. One hopes his confidence is vindicated in the end.