Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
When Brahma spoke
|
From Thoreau to Barbie, no subject was too tough or trivial in the quiz that had some of the best brains battling it out, writes PANKAJA SRINIVASAN
|
Did you know that Dilip Kumar was offered the role in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia that Omar Sharif eventually played?
PHOTO: M. PERIASAMY
WHAT'S THE GOOD WORD From Brahma '06
"A new boyfriend," piped up one voice, while another disgruntled one muttered, "a divorce". Both were wrong; the right answer to the question, `What did Barbie get in the year 2000?' was — a spanking new belly button!
To borrow the favourite word of Manoj, the quizmaster, Brahma '06, organised by the quiz club of Coimbatore Institute of Technology, was "awesome".
The trivia questions ranged from GI Joe to the Jedi, Flintstones to R2D2 of Star Wars. And, in between, there was an avalanche of questions on a mind-boggling array of subjects.
While the teams on stage seemed completely unfazed by the questions, to the untutored in the audience it was a revelation. What on earth did these guys read?
They seemed to know a considerable amount about anti-popes (a person claiming to be or elected pope in opposition to the one chosen by church law), phenomenology, The Battle of Stanford Bridge and art deco.
Trivia pursuit
In the course of the evening, one learnt that the present Pope once drove around in a Black Golf car that was apparently the favoured mode of transport of Casanovas in Europe.
And did you know that Dilip Kumar was offered the role in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia that Omar Sharif eventually played?
What are the things that cannot be sold on e-bay?
The list is long and if you are planning to trade, among other things, in body parts and Nazi memorabilia, you are not allowed to do so.
How many of you would recognise the flag of the Isle of Man if you saw it? Amazingly there were quite a few who did, even amongst the audience.
And who do you think Henry James was talking about when he described her as follows:
"She had a low forhead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouthful of uneven teeth ... Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which ... steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her. ... this great horse-faced bluestocking"?
Someone in the audience actually thought the description best fitted Marilyn Monroe, but the correct answer was George Eliot!
The national anthem of the erstwhile USSR, a painting of the 13 wise men in Raphael's work School of Athens and how oft-used terms like "no free lunch', `doubting Thomas', etc., came about sent the quizzers groping for their microphones.
Questions were flashed on the screen. A slew of them tested the teams' knowledge of history, literature, music and art. "Connect the images" was an interesting quizzing concept where three or more visuals were flashed on screen and the participants had to guess how they were interconnected.
For example, one had to connect an image from My Fair Lady, a rare photograph of George Bernard Shaw with Helen Keller and the book cover of The Miracle Worker. The connection?
My Fair Lady was based on Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw, who was in the picture with Helen Keller, based on whose life the book, The Miracle Worker, was written. Whew! Speaking of long- windedness, who was it who spoke non-stop for eight hours at the United Nations Security Council?
If you were an Amartya Sen fan you would have known the answer to this one. It was Krishna Menon who held forth so long as he defended India's stand on Kashmir.
The audio rounds had everyone paying close attention as the voices of Stephen Hawking, Orson Wells from the War of the Worlds and Talat Mahmood filled the auditorium.
Those present had the opportunity of seeing rare photographs of Jim Corbett, Trotsky and a picture taken during the trial following Mahatma Gandhi's assassination showing Nathuram Godse and Veer Savarkar. Excerpts from famous speeches were read out, including one by Martin Luther King as he quoted from Thoreau, on Civil Disobedience.
It was evident that the CITians had slogged over the quiz. The questions were well researched and well presented.
The sponsors of the show were Tata Consultancy Services, Flexitronics and HP.
The winners
The winners of Brahma'06 were Vinod Ganesh and Jayakanthan R. whose team went by the delightful name of `Intel Inside, Mental Outside'.
They won Rs. 15,000 in cash and were awarded certificates and the sponsors' T-shirts.
The second place winners were `Know Brainers' Rajen Prabhu and Gopal Kidao, who earned Rs. 10,000 for their admirable effort and in third place were Samanth and G. Swaminathan who called themselves `QED' and won Rs. 8,000 and certificates.
Fifteen teams were awarded certificates for a great effort and the whiz quizzer from SBOA, S. Rohit, and his teammate Atulaa Krishnamoorthy, `Quizzy Potter and Ron Quizzley', got special mention as the Best School Team.
They won a cash prize of Rs. 2,000.
V.V. Ramanan, the renowned quiz-master, made up one of the teams, and he had this to say at the end of the show.
"It was a great effort, and you have just witnessed some of the best quizzers from these parts."
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
