A Happening Evening, A Splendid Night...

It was a lazy evening in NUST H-12 Islamabad. Students were cooling off in the café or under the trees. Some were hurrying to the football ground. Others were heading for their hostels. Except for a bunch of crazy students who had gathered in the SCME seminar hall for, wait for it, NSS Welcome! Yes guys! Thursday 26^th was the day when the new, the old and the adventurous gathered for the exciting scavenger hunt in NUST H-12. Our young President is giving the inaugural speech in the Seminar Hall while outside the hall;

Hey, I wanna register my team for the scavenger hunt.

Sorry registration closed tomorrow.

What man, I just came to know from my friend. We have come all the way from EME, come on now!

And a bewildered EC thanks me for coming from 7 miles away while he sheepishly admits that here students don’t even come 500 metres off the road to hear about what exactly NSS is.

Back to the hall the audience is being fed to the 22+ events NSS has held in the past year when out of nowhere the audience starts clapping. After a few moments they are still clapping. And after some time when even the comparer has opened her mouth to speak again, the clapping shows no sign of ending, the person sitting next to me begins to wonder that we have strategically placed people in the seminar hall who were bribed to keep clapping and shouts out loud:

”Bhai kitne pese mile thay”.

 Oh well it’s just the love people give us. Otherwise we are only busy boosting up our registrations to give everyone a chance to stand out. And yes stand out we did. In the sun outside SADA, beside the solar water heater outside IESE, in the parking lot of SEECS, in short all over the academic area of H-12 (minus SMME), the participants were running, searching for clues and solving puzzles in a bid to claim the winning position. And even after the two long hunt they were not disappointed. Well you, wouldn’t too if you were offered a place in the air conditioned seminar hall watching a movie screening, that too after helping yourself to a well-deserved refreshment pack. And did the SCI-venger hunt+movie night boost up registrations ? Well, ask that from the first year SEECS student who I had a chance to have a chit chat with while standing on duty in the parking lot:

So what does NSS do really?

Well, it is just your average society, with a lot of glamour and dinners and lunches. All for a tiny bit of enjoyable extracurricular, combined with working together in a diverse mix of high achievers and mediocre background. And when you consider the trifling amount of work required, it really does pay off nicely.