Birth Pangs...

We started in the right earnest, informed all our friends, colleagues and foes (practically everyone who would care to listen) about our plans but the initial response was quite lukewarm. Meeting every Sunday morning and talking in English was not obviously a thrilling idea..!! However, we didn't let the disappointment get to us. We decided to take on the challenge. We realised the need for Marketing..!!

After a lot of soul searching and brainstorming, we stumbled upon the solution and thought - "Why don't we start a club ourselves where the admission would be restricted to Sangli students? Where eligibility for membership will not be your present English skills but your desire to work hard to improve?" And so born SOFTA...

To start with, we sat together and spent many hours (you can imagine our college attendance records) in deciding the appropriate name for this club. We wanted to make it clear on the outset that this club was not for regular Antakshari, Housie and Snacks kind of activities and so, it was christened SOFTA. (Now, after all these years, when I think about it... Come on, let's accept..!! What a ridiculous name, right? Students' Organization for Technical Activities..!! Sounds like Medha Patkar's cousins studying in engineering taking a protest march to the college and demanding more lectures, practicals and orals. But hell, I love the name..!!)

Learning To Crawl...

The day still vividly flashes in my mind. I was one of those four perplexed ones and wefour (Sandesh Shetti, Manish Gawasane, Abhijeet Tengshe and myself) had a serious problem. A friend of us was flustered. He wanted to join a very 'famous and elite' club in his college because he wanted to improve his English and personality but he was rejected because his English was bad and he did not have an impressive personality. We were confused because we were not sure how to console and help him. If this indeed was an advertising scene, we could have told him to apply some fairness cream and get selected..!! Not that we were against such elite clubs. In fact, I was an active member of it myself but when we thought hard about the situation, we realised the fallacies about the selection process. Any college club which was being run for the development of the students, should it not be run for developing the underdeveloped students? How can the membership be restricted to those who were already at a certain elevated level of development? Why was it that the local Sangli students were consistently disallowed to participate in such club activities? Yes, accepted the fact that, on an average, English skills of Sangli students (especially in those times) were very poor but then, if we wanted to improve, what was the way out?

I have completed my MBA from one of the best B-schools in India but honestly, my best learning on marketing have been from SOFTA days. We knew it would be easier to make people talk in English once we get them together in a room but the problem was how to make them join? The first step was to make sure that girls are involved as well..!! (I have spent 10 minutes looking at the line I have just typed. Should I delete it? No. I think you will understand what I am saying. And, who are we fooling? Have you ever seen a successful, thriving 'only boys' or 'only girls' club at college level??)

So, we formed a 'Co-ordination Committee' with 8 members (4 boys and 4 girls. Way ahead of time, right? SOFTA might be the only/first college level club to practice Gender Equality from the start..!!). Manish Gawasane (PVPIT) was appointed the President (We still tease Manish that the only reason he was chosen was because out of 4 of us, he was the only one with a telephone connection at home) and Shweta Jadhav (WCE) as the Vice-President. (By the way, the first SOFTA president was not from Walchand as you can see. In fact, only half the co-ordinators were from Walchand. It was only after some years that some smart Walchandites hijacked the club..!!)

On Its Feet And Walking...

We announced our first meet. What was the program for the first meet? Antakshari, Housie and Snacks..!! The program combined with the neat structure of the club, a president, a vice-president, all genders, all colleges, (all that even before a single member had enrolled) helped. People came. They came in numbers. SOFTA started walking. For first six months, we continued meeting every Sunday morning with about 30 members. Soon, SOFTA world spread.

Its Running And Rocking...

By March 1994, SOFTA membership grew to about 50 and to about 75 by August 1994. Till now we were allowing (more appropriately, welcoming) everyone. But, now the number was getting out of control. Not only were our batch mates eager to join but even seniors and juniors had started requesting. (What an ego boost was it for us..!!) From August 1994, just one year after it started, SOFTA closed its membership and now we decided to select only those who fit into SOFTA's make-up and were honest in their intentions to raise standards. We were in T.E. and as a policy we decided to say 'sorry' to B.E., S.E. and F.E. students. From September, interested T.E. students had to write an application and were then interviewed by us to decide on their application. (God..!! Further Ego boost..!!)

In our last year of engineering, we started recruiting S.E. students with the intention of working with them for a year and then handing over the club to them. When all of us left Sangli after engineering, we tried to keep in touch with SOFTA but unfortunately after 2 years, we lost touch.

In 2003, I came back to India and started 'Ace Grads' and it was during my first Campus Training Program at WCE in 2004 that I read on a student's CV "Member of SOFTA" and I had the biggest surprise of my life. Never, in our wildest of imagination did we think that the club would remain active for so many years.

Gratitude...

I cannot finish this article without expressing my heartfelt "thanks" to the organization SOFTA. SOFTA has played a great role in defining me as a person and a great deal of my practical education in life has been imparted by my association with SOFTA.

I see now that SOFTA is spreading wings and hopefully will continue to reach higher standards. My sincere wishes to every SOFTAITE.