It was a bit of a surprise for the audience who were moved when they heard a beautiful teenage love story and Tamil poetry of Thilak Chakravarthi, a 19-year-old engineering student at the first of its kind Open mic organised by Ink High, an online literature portal.

This is the first time an open mic is happening in the city and youngsters and youth walked in to grab their opportunity held at Hotel Landmark today. Youngsters with different sets of talent performed at the open mic. Thilak, after his performance, said, “I came here just to watch the show but after seeing others perform I wanted to share my first love experience. I felt Open mic is a wonderful opportunity to do that, because people are not usually ready to talk about their love relations and I felt it important to share that.”

Arun Sreenivas, an 18-year-old student at ESI Medical College here performed some popular English numbers on his keyboard. He has also authored and self-published a book ‘When Dreams Come True’. He felt that open mics were productive. “Open mics are the future. They are a wonderful space to showcase talent. Instead of spending weekends in pubs and clubs and getting up tired next day, I believe open mics are best way to spend weekends.”

Aditya KH, an engineering student at VIT, Vellore, made everyone think with his oration on middle class mediocrity. “I’m one of the core members of Ink High and I feel Coimbatore has a huge potential for open mics. I want to make people think through my oration. I was inspired by the film` Aruvi’ and that’s why I spoke about middle class mediocrity,” he said.

The seats started getting filled up soon and the list of performers kept on extending with about 25 performers turning up for first open mic in the city. Avyaktha, the popular music band going for a world tour next year, also performed and moved the audience with some AR Rahman numbers.

Nickendra Manikandan S, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ink High said, “Ink High is an free online literature portal where authors can write about anything they wish to. We didn’t want to charge our authors for publishing or for content hence we started organising open mics. In future, we are also planning free video production for best performers at open mics.” Vishnu Agilesh JK, District Manager of Ink High, said, “We will be hosting open mics next month too in the city.” All members of Ink High are engineering students.