Homing in on heritage

THE AIR is abuzz with questions, stated and unstated. Yes, there has been a slew of quiz contests in Chennai of late. The latest in the row was DakshinaChitra's Heritage Quiz for college students. Three preliminary rounds were held during three successive Fridays in September when 75 teams from many city colleges had a go at it. The top two teams from each of these rounds found a place in the finals held on September 29 at the open-air theatre in the idyllic setting of DakshinaChitra, situated far away from the madding crowd of the metropolis.

What was interesting was that all the six teams were from Madras IIT. Overheard from a student who did not make the grade (to the finals): "the IIT guys have a 24-hour access to Internet!"

The aim was to educate the youth about the rich and diverse cultural heritage we are all heirs to. A folk dance competition was held minutes before the quiz began — this to spread awareness among college students about the folk performing arts of India. Five city colleges participated. MOP Vaishnav walked away with the honours.Arjun Shetty, a IV year student from Anna University, together with Yogeeswaran from the same institution, fired the brain-teasers.

There were five rounds in all — the second round found the quizzers having to choose topics such as mythology, history, arts, literature, architecture and cinema. The buzzer, rapid fire and visual rounds had the teams thinking on their feet... There was some good natured ribbing... who composed the music for "Shakespearewalla"?, Shetty queried.

When the question passed on to the audience — there were quite a few prizes for them as well — answers ranged from``Michael Jackson to A.R. Rahman!''. Satyajit Ray is the correct answer, only the quizmaster knew!

Where are the Saas-bahu temples to be found? ``In IIT...'' came the lighthearted whisper. The fact is they are located in Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh. Midway through the competition, it became clear that Team One were runaway winners. S. Karthik and C.S. Aneesh, both doing II year Engineering in IIT, notched up 120 points and were rewarded with Air India return tickets to Mumbai, Rs.10,000 from Accents Chennai (retailers of Swarovski and Lladro), Internet connection from Netcracker, saris for Rs.2000 from Roshanlal. Annexing the second position was S. Srinivasan and A.N.V. Rangarajan, also of IIT, Madras, with a tally of 100 points.

The prizes included a holiday package to Goa from Club Mahindra Holiday. Deborah Thiagarajan gave away the prizes.

V.R. Devika was the M.C., while Poornima Anandan proposed a vote of thanks.

SELINE AUGUSTINE

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