IT WAS OCTOBER, almost at its fag end. An autumn afternoon seemed to be just slyly slipping away; evening too beckoned, eager to embrace dusk. A sense of quaint déjà vu was also reverberating; a subtle, yet animated anticipation of an intellectual amalgam of sorts, ever ready to challenge one’s ‘indices of intellect’.

Amidst such a ripe and intellectually titillating ambience, the curtains finally rose at the Pragjyoti ITA Cultural Complex, Machkhowa, Guwahati, on such an autumn afternoon of October 25, 2009. The event: The Colosseum Open Quiz Fest, 2009, now an annual quiz extravaganza since 2008, was staged to celebrate the successful completion of 11 hallowed years (1998-2009) of ‘The Colosseum’ quiz column which appears every Friday in The Assam Tribune, under the able stewardship of Neelotpal Deka, a young, London-educated cyber lawyer, who also happens to be the first cyber lawyer in the entire North East.

The Colosseum Open Quiz Fest, 2009 was jointly organised by The Assam Tribune, the premier English daily of the North East and Social Action Network (SAN), a North East based NGO, with a progressive motto, “We Act, We Reform”. It was formally inaugurated by Justice Biplab Kumar Sharma, Hon’ble Judge, Gauhati High Court in the presence of Tulsi Govinda Baruah, Chairman, The Assam Tribune group of newspapers, Prof Dilip Kumar Barua, the ‘Father of Quizzing in North East India’, AK Dev, Chief General Manager, State Bank of India (SBI), Kamesh Salam, President, World Bamboo Organisation and other distinguished guests. Justice BK Sharma, in his short speech, enlightened the audience with an inspiring Sanskrit shloka and also delved briefly into the history of the word ‘Quiz’. TG Baruah, in his inimitable light hearted style, dwelt upon a very interesting anecdote from the epic, the Mahabharata. According to him, the genesis of quizzing could be traced back to the days of the Mahabharata, which, in one way or the other, was prevalent among the nobles of that ancient era. He also went on to add that quizzing at that time was conducted in the Sanskrit language.

The task of pruning down the number of participating teams from a mammoth 243 to just 6 (six) was not an easy one. So, a written preliminary round was held initially, where all the participating teams were each given a set of 25 questions – to be answered in exactly 20 minutes. Finally, a total of six teams made it to the final cut for the “Grand Finale”, following a keenly-contested preliminary round, which even went in for as many as three tie-breaker rounds, to break the deadlock among teams tied on equal points. Of the six teams selected for the “Grand Finale”, ‘The Usual Suspects’, represented by Amrit Pritom Chetia and Bidyut Bikash Bailung, reigned victorious to claim the coveted “Hari-Swarna Memorial Trophy” given away by Latika Deka on behalf of the family of Hari Chandra Deka. ‘Etesuqam’, represented by Dipankar Koushik and Biswajyoti Saikia, and ‘Arc-En-Ciel’ represented by Arnav Neog and Upakul Sarma, bagged the second and third prizes respectively.

The winning teams were awarded, along with other prizes, two laptops sponsored by Ubisurfer and Grassland accommodation in Kaziranga, two Videocon colour TVs, two DVD players sponsored by Bharali Brothers, gift hampers from ITC (Vivel Soaps and Shampoos and Classmate), one-year subscription of The Eclectic magazine for all the finalist teams, books from Assam Book Depot, Gold Cinema tickets and wall clocks from Swiss Watch Corporation. The audience, too, were awarded gift hampers from different companies for answering questions correctly. Altogether prizes worth more than Rs one lakh were awarded to the winners and the audience. Prof Dilip Kumar Barua, Principal Achyut Chandra Deka, Director General, (SAN) and S Sugunendiran, Assistant General Manager, (Region I), SBI gave away the prizes. The Colosseum Annual Awards, 2008, (instituted since 2000), were also given to the contributors of the column in recognition of their contributions to ‘The Colosseum’ column. Jayanta Kumar Nath of Tezpur was selected as the “Best of The Colosseum 2008”.

The quiz was conducted by Prof. Dilip Kumar Barua, Neelotpal Deka and Sailen Baishya. The event was sponsored by State Bank of India, Cane & Bamboo Technology Centre, HP and NEDFi. The media partners of the event were The Eclectic, Leo Advertising, News Live and Big FM and the print partner was Bhabani Offset. The event was managed by Mukesh Ray, while Kankana Goswami lent her beautiful voice and anchored the entire event. The event was also marked by a few hilarious moments, when Neelotpal Deka was literally mobbed (for prizes) by the very audience (all and sundry), in whose midst he had gone to conduct the audience quiz. These moments really summed up the light-hearted mood of the entire gala event, which in essence, was a grand success.

Saikh Md Sabah Al-ahmed