prelude  WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2010, and I welcome you all to this episode of THE COLOSSEUM that heralds the New Year, and of course, this episode of THE COLOSSEUM brings you the announcement of The Colosseum Annual Awards, 2009. The column has completed a long eleven years in October, 2009. It has as well completed four years of its existence online in The Assam Tribune website. The Colosseum Quiz Fest, 2009 was also organised in a grand way, and now, this quiz show is a yearly event. The column has come a long way, and I would like to thank all the well wishers for their support, all throughout. I am, especially thankful to all those who have been regularly contributing to us, thus making the column a successful one. When questions need to be from a specific area (culture), it requires lots of patience and labour. This cultural quiz column, is perhaps only the one of its kind in entire India, and now, we have a good number of contributors with quality, matching the standard of this column. There no dearth of quizzing talent in this part of the country, and this is evident from the increasing number of contributors of this column throughout the past ten years, especially during the year 2009. During this year, new entrants, who have made a mark in this column are: Alakananda Medhi, Kamal Medhi, Deepjyoti Deka, Himjyoti Talukdar, Saroj Kumar Deka, Pranjal Kishore Sharma, Manjil P Saikia, and Kamal Jyoti Borah, and the list goes on. Among the quiz contributors of this column, my recent favourites are: Dipankar Koushik, Jayanta Kumar Nath, and Maharnav Gogoi, etc. Though THE COLOSSEUM has been receiving contributions from different States of India such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Haryana, Delhi, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, I must admit it is the quizzards from the Northeastern States, more specially the contributors from Assam, who are basically responsible for the success of this column. In Assam, we have contributors from almost all the districts of the Brahmaputra valley. But we get maximum contributions from Kamrup district, followed by Nalbari, Darrang, Sonitpur, Sivasagar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Tinsukia, Bongaigaon, Dhubri, Lakhimpur and Nagaon districts. In the last couple of years; we are privileged to get contributions from a few European countries, the USA, and the Russian Federation. After nurturing the column for the last eleven years, I feel it necessary that the new entrants to the quizzing fraternity should be encouraged more, and therefore, there was always an effort to publish more questions from the contributors, rather than publishing my own questions most of the time. For all the contributors of this column, it is important to note that this is a cultural quiz column, and my definition of culture includes areas like music, dance, fashion, designing, movies, art, sculpture, books, literature, little bit of history, culture of different Northeastern tribes, and culture in different parts of the world. All the contributors of the column are requested to mail his/her photo, for our record book. This is required while we are on the process of considering the names for The Colosseum Annual Awards, 2010. While publishing the names of the best contributors of the column today, I would like to request the rest, whose names do not appear in the list, not to lose heart, and try their best in 2010. The standard was equally good for all regular contributors. And it is for your information that the best contributors in each sub-sections of the column are selected on the basis of most number of published questions by a single contributor, or sometimes, on the basis of the merit of questions. Therefore, for that reason, in most of the years, the same winners are winning prizes. The Awards will be given away at The Colosseum Quiz, 2010 event, in recognition of their tireless efforts to make this column successful. Congrats to all of you... and here goes the announcement of awards ...but even with celebration on for the New Year tonight and the Magh Bihu, keep continuing the good work by mailing me your questions with answers to me at: only4_pol@yahoo.co.uk or post them at: THE COLOSSEUM, Mosaic, Friday Supplement, The Assam Tribune, Guwahati-781003.

best of the colosseum  Maharnav Gogoi, Assam Engineering College, Guwahati.

best of prelude  Banashree Baruah, Department of Economics, Cotton College, Guwahati.

best of side screen  First: Himjyoti Talukdar, Ashram, New Delhi, Second: Deepjyoti Deka, Nalbari, Third: Manjil P Saikia, Tezpur University, Tezpur.

best of harmonisers  First: Alakananda Medhi, Guwahati, Second: Md Sadique Hussain Laskar, Guwahati, Third: Kamal Jyoti Borah, Gauhati University.

best of unities  First: Saroj Kr Deka, Gauhati University, Second: Dipankar Koushik, Guwahati, Third: Sonmani Das, Nalbari.

best of do-re-me  First: Maharnav Gogoi, Assam Engineering College, Guwahati, Second: Pranjal Kishore Sharmah, Moscow, Third: Kamal Medhi, Guwahati.

best of crescendo  First: Maharnav Gogoi, Assam Engineering College, Guwahati, Second: Saroj Kr Deka, Gauhati University, Third: Abhra Das, Guwahati. Jayanta Kumar Nath, Tezpur, Jyotirupa Roy, Bongaigaon, Diksharani Baruah, Guwahati.

highest contributor  Maharnav Gogoi, Assam Engineering College, Guwahati.