Last week, I found myself squarely in the middle of a type of event that I do not normally find myself in the middle of. An event for charity, called CEO’s Got Talent, based on the “_ _ _ Got Talent” property by Fremantle Media. The Bombay round of the event had taken place previously and I was going to be covering the Delhi round. Eight CEOs from various industries would be participating and sharing their talents with the audience. The judges were Mahesh Bhatt, Raj Nayak and Neha Dhupia. Mini Mathur was the delightful compere and the participants were mostly quite talented. Like almost everyone at the event shared in hushed and not-so-hushed tones, one usually does not expect CEOs to be entertainers! But entertain they did and regardless of how one judges their level of talent, considering I know how hard it is to go on stage and allow yourself to be judged for anything, I offer a hat-tip to all the participants.
It’s nice to have my brand represent something for charity. All proceeds from this event went to the Genesis Foundation’s effort to help children with serious ailments and I was happy to be part of the event as their “official blogger”. I also got to take selfies with some of my favourite people! ( Two photos below this text are from the Genesis Foundation Facebook page – I’ve edited them a tad and shown them here because it’s got my logo in the back! Left and right extremes of the board in the back. I’m still learning how to best format the logo for “checkerboard” appearances, hence the tiny size. But so much EXCITE! )
The big red buzzer button for when the judges really do not want any more from a particular participant. It was not used even once throughout the entire evening.
Here’s a motion piece from the event that I did. ( This was the first time I was handling the spoken word and I’ve not managed the audio gain too well – fair warning. )
Below, with Sairee Chahal of SHEROES.
Above, with Neha, Kriti and Srishti of Genesis Foundation.
Below with @prasanto
Above, with the first participant, @kritisdad and below with the second participant, Special Commissioner of Police, Traffic, New Delhi Dr. Muktesh Chander
Above with @chetan_seth
My favourite performances were the rock musician by @kritisdad, the flute by the police commissioner, the stand up comedy by Amit Tandon and the insanely powerful performance by Shivani W. Pasrich. The second runner up was Amit Tandon for this stand-up comeday, the first runner up was Dr. Muktesh Chander for his beautiful self-taught flute and the winner was Amar Raj Singh for his simple and soulful poetry – he got a standing ovation from the judges too.
Thank you for inviting me Neha, I’m glad I did this at your behest. Great fun even though it went on for way longer than I had expected – clearly, I have yet to experience a whole lot more to get my baseline right!
Genesis Foundation also runs the Kasauli Rhythm & Blues Festival!
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