This article is dedicated to my fellow fine arts team members of St.Joseph’s college, Trichy.
One of the most fascinating phases in one’s life is the years spent at college. It adds more enjoyment and brings in different kind of experience by staying in hostel. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was a day scholar right through six years of my college life. I would consider myself lucky to have got into a college like St.Joseph’s for the particular reason that it helped me to instill quizzing capabilities in me and take it to further heights. I have recollected below, how my quizzing career started, and how it bloomed.
Fortunately my college had been blessed with good quizzers before me and they were able to help me to become a decent quizzer at an inter-collegiate level. I was never into quizzes till my school days except watching Siddartha Basu’s India quiz in the national channel every Sunday 9 PM. During my first year, we classmates (3 of us) casually participated in an open quiz conducted by Rotary club where over 100 teams participated. A total of 25 questions and we just managed to get 3 correct. We were just ogling at the girls who had come to participate and eager to watch the finals. In the list of six finalists that was announced, to our shock, our team was one of them. Another team from our college was in the finals. Of course, we finished last. Later, for the annual inter-department meet in our college, I managed to represent my department for the quiz. One of the members of our college quiz team, Lego Joseph, who was two years senior to me, felt that I have some interest in quizzing, took me for inter-collegiate and inter-department quizzes in the town just to give an exposure to quizzes. It drew me more towards quizzing and started reading newspapers and magazines with the intention of collecting information whatever I felt apt. That’s how my quizzing appetite started.
My senior Lego was doing his PG and he always used to give a run for money to opponents. In the inter-collegiate meets, the quizzers from other colleges would frown on seeing his face. Usually every quiz has written prelims and then followed by finals. Towards the first half of my second year, I managed to get into the finals on few occasions. That was the time the annual Gandhi Quiz came around hosted by our college. Lego asked me if I would be interested and I gleefully nodded. I took the Louie Fischer’s biography on Gandhi from our library and memorized the facts inside out. On the day of the quiz, there were 10 teams (2 per team). I just blasted my way through and when the quiz got over, our team had secured 130 points (10 for direct, 5 for pass over) and the next score was somewhere less than 50. We won the overall shield and were given mementoes. This was my first prize. After some time, the professor in charge of Quiz & Debating club asked me if I would be interested to participate in an inter-college quiz at Gandhigram University, Dindugul. Why the hell I would refuse? He told me that a guy named Ramprasad doing his third year Commerce will be my team mate. We won that quiz there by a whooping margin and it helped me to firmly establish as a successor to Lego and continue the quizzing fraternity of our college. Qualifying for the finals, then, became a formality for me in the quizzes conducted in and around Trichy. When I was into my third year, Shrinivasan, who earlier did his UG, joined M.C.A and he, also being a good quizzer like Lego added strength to our quiz club and along with the juniors – PK Vijay and Mukunth, we were set to rule the roast for next 3-4 years to come.
The third year started with an inter-collegiate hosted by Aptech computers (competitor to NIIT). Our team had qualified for the quiz finals and so many of my college mates whom I don’t even know came and wished me good luck. I was surprised and butterflies started churning in my stomach. It was purely due to the reason that our college was neck-in-neck with Bishop Heber College in overall points. We put up a good performance, won the quiz beating Bishop Heber and paved the way for claiming the overall trophy. There was no looking back after that. I began to flourish in lot more inter-college festivals winning quizzes or securing second or third prize.
I have tried to highlight few of my inter-college experiences (though not in specific chronological order)...
CECRI, Karaikudi: The inter-college meet in the name of ‘KALA’ was purely literally events with mild touch towards arts such as vocal music and instruments. The quiz was tough since IIT students from Madras used to participate. They dominate all literary events in a ruthless fashion. In our two years of participation, we were able to put up a good show. Our team won the second and third prize beating a team from IIT in the buzzer quiz. It was a nice and nail-biting experience as every question has to be answered on buzzer; 4 points for right answer and -2 for wrong answer. We also put up a decent show in other events such as JAM where my college mates Sherwin and Vivek reached the finals, GUESS WHO where our quiz team won the second place, Vocal solo – bagging the first prize in both Carnatic and Light music category, and Painting where our college’s trump card Antony Maria Joseph left his incredible marks.
I simply couldn't forget the night when we were returning from CECRI, Anto and Sahayaraj were drunk and smoked beedi due to non-availability of cigarettes. In the middle of night around 1.00 clock, we were all deep asleep due to tiredness when couple of us felt that the train has stopped and to our shock, it was Trichy junction. We all hurridely wanted to get down before the train starts, but Anto and Sahayaraj simply refused to move and semi-aware of the urgency. Lego cursed Anto and Sahayam using bad words in tamil (only occasion on which he was forced to use) and somehow we were able to get you two down.
Agricultural College, Madurai: This is an unforgettable meet. We were just 6 – me, Fredrick, Vivek, Antony, Kingsley, and PK Vijay. There were other colleges who had come with strong contingent of 15 members or so and honestly we were never aiming the overall shield, but wanted to put up good show in literary events. There was a variety event and though none of us had been part of that team, suddenly struck upon the idea of putting up a show. We just managed to recollect some of the jokes that our college team staged did some tweaking and introduced some new things at top of our head and our show was decently appreciated by the audience. When the results were announced, holy s***, we got the third prize. We then just went for the kill. PK Vijay and I cracked the quiz, Vivek and Freddie won the debate, Anto won the painting events, clay modeling and soap sculpturing and on the final day, we were topping the points table with just couple of events like light music and fashion show to follow. We decided we don't have the expertise and so didn't take part, thus helping American college to take the lead, but looking at some of the other teams that put up the fashion show, we were banging our head for not taking part. Had we had done a walking on the stage for the 10 minutes time, we would have surely got the third prize!
A special mention on soap sculpturing done by Anto – he had never done that before. But while relaxing a smoke on the main road after lunch on the second day, Anto bought smallest Rexona soap available in the petty shop. We didn’t bother to enquire why he bought it for and then in the late afternoon, he was into the event. He carved the figure of Gandhi so beautifully and accurately in the tiny space that it deserved to be given the first prize.
Saarang '97, IIT Madras
I don’t think there needs to be an introduction to what Saarang is all about. Riding on the euphoria of the success at Bardfest and following it up with runner-up status at Festember ’96, we thought we should give a shot at Saarang and create an impression of what SJCT is all about.
Around 25 of us went in from here lead by Prof. Jayaraj for a 6 day gala. We were given accommodation in the Brahmaputra hostel with five rooms to share. But the events were tougher than we thought. The awful part of Saarang was that it allowed the host to participate in large numbers and they also qualified for prizes. I have never seen the host college participating in such a large number and there were no external judges for any of the competitions, at least literary events. The only place where the host college participated was at REC Festember, but they won’t make up more than 50% of the finalists and don’t qualify for the prizes. IIT students are better than many other college students when it comes to literary events such as JAM, Debate, Extempore and Quizzes, but here, it was exceeding all such limits. I wonder why they should invite other colleges when they have enough people to get those prizes.
I, Mukunth and PK Vijay managed to get into the finals of a quiz called ‘India Quiz’; there were six other quizzes which we couldn’t get into the finals. Imagine how it would be when we were one of the six finalists, the rest 5 teams from IIT Madras itself. Somehow we grabbed the questions that came our way and there were some thrilling moments till we secured the second place. The team that came third started to claim that they got second and we were actually third in spite of the scorer announcing the scores. Luckily, I was keeping track of the questions we answered and scores at the end of each round. I then showed the sheet of paper to that team after which they had to shut their mouth.
The prelims of ‘sports quiz’ was conducted in a large open area with the quiz master sitting under a tree trunk and firing questions and the participants required to find their own place to sit and write answers in sheet of paper they have got with them. His voice was never heard properly because of the mike system and breeze blowing around.
In JAM, it was so pathetic to see the JAM master in the first round becoming a participant in second round. Eventually all the JAM masters participated in at least one round. We were deprived of prize in debate, although our debating team was given good reference on their performance indirectly before the results were announced. I wonder why they didn’t give the prize then.
Anto did a superb rangoli, a huge sized one which impressed every on-looker. Just we thought he will get, it was given to some other painting which was artistically much lesser than what Anto had done. Finally, all Anto got was a consolation prize which contained a huge cash prize of 25 Rs!!!
In dance, we got lot no. 12 and to our shock, our famed dance song ‘Cotton eye joe’ was staged by at least 4 teams before our turn came. It became boring for the judges and naturally didn’t get the attention it deserved. Probably we didn’t had the hindsight to have prepared for alternate songs, retaining the steps.
We did enjoyed the six days stay at IIT, the food, numerous bush-walks we did in the sprawling campus, seeing events at OAT, consoling Anto who was so dejected that he didn’t get the prize (he spent the 25Rs on drinks and it was tough time to make him come back to him senses) and so many other small incidents.
Overall, it was a good learning experience for each one of us and we decided that 'it was not our cup of tea', after seeing the way the competitions were organized and amount of host participation.
Pic: The train journey from Trichy to Chennai
More to come...
Festember, REC
Confluence, Bishop Heber
Bardfest (University selection)
Version, All India MCA meet, REC
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