Rightly is it said, that those who live hard and work hard, party hard as well... !!

And  GMC’s annual cultural fest ensures that we do just that.. and how!

Cos this is Astitva- the eagerly awaited festival of the largest medical college in Maharashtra and one of the oldest and the best in the country... a nationwide hub!!

Four days of creativity, learning, fads, fun and frolic- which draws  thousands of students from different medical and engineering colleges to it every year. The festival is organized at the college campus as well as the gymkhana located at one of the most beautiful locations in Mumbai  i.e.  MARINE DRIVE.

And this year- Astitva is back- bigger and better than ever! And the campus is heating up with excitement and frenzy .. quite literally!! The reason?? Take a look>>>

"Global Warming Melts Peruvian Peaks"

"Amazon Burning Makes Brazil a Leading Polluter"

"Global Warming melts Antarctic ice caps..raises sea level.. floods expected!!"

These headlines are enough to give you fever: If every world citizen, upon reading about global warming, changed his habits after seeing one of these chilling reports, our planetary temperature might return to normal in due course.

But too many of us read about global warming events while sipping double cappuccinos made from coffee beans growing in our vanishing rainforests, or while sitting in traffic behind the wheel of a gas-guzzling car. Our greatest challenge is to realize Earth herself hangs in the balance. Just as with nuclear war, global warming affects us all. There's no place to flee. Unlike the choice of moving to another country if you're dissatisfied with the political situation at home, you can't escape global warming. Article after article makes it abundantly clear that we're all in this together.

The earth is heating up. Quite literally. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation have turned the earth into a humongous microwave oven, and what's cooking inside it is our collective brainpower. Global warming is a reflection of how overheated we are as we go about modern life; all a global warming article or book does is capture our blistering behavior in print.

As Barack Obama likes to say, the time for debate is over. We need to shut up now.

True to its name, Astitva-2010 aims to explore our existence with this all important question- How can we become more conscious consumers, responsible protectors of our environment, and reduce our dependence on the latest rage of fossil fuels, so that we don't keep fueling our drive to become fossils faster..???

Cos this time, there's no one to point fingers at. As the comic strip character on Pogo once said... "We've met the enemy and he is us. Trouble is.. he's both 'us' and 'them'". Global warming is but a global warning. It is no longer a catastrophe waiting to happen... it is happening..!!!