There have been quiz columns published in different newspapers and magazines, but in the print and quizzing history of North-East India, ‘The Colosseum’ is the first quiz column that has completed ten years under a single columnist and has been a published in The Assam Tribune since 1998. To mark the completion of a decade, a gala quiz event – The Colosseum Open Quiz Fest, 2008 – was jointly organised by The Assam Tribune and a North-East based NGO, Social Action Network (SAN), which was successfully concluded on Sunday, October 26, 2008, at the Pragjyoti ITA Cultural Complex, Guwahati. The Colosseum Quiz Fest, 2008 can be termed a unique quiz event, as never before had a quiz entirely devoted to culture been held in the North-East in such a large scale. The theme “culture” for the event was defined so as to include “music, dance, fashion, designing, movies, art, sculpture, books, literature, a little bit of history related to culture, culture of different Northeastern tribes and culture in different parts of the world”. The quiz attracted a huge crowd and participants from all walks of life, from different towns and cities.

The event was inaugurated by Justice Sri HN Sharma of the Gauhati High Court, who appreciated the efforts of The Assam Tribune and the Social Action Network for presenting such a wonderful event, with great educative value. He lauded how the columnist and contributors from across the world have made the column successful throughout its journey over the past ten years. The inauguration was followed by the release of the book The Colosseum, a collection of best questions from the last ten years of the column, published by NL Publications, Guwahati. Releasing the book, the Chairman of The Assam Tribune Group of newspapers, Sri TG Baruah, in his speech, stressed the need for organising this kind of quiz event regularly every year. Immediately after the inaugural session, the audience was enthralled by the classical group dance recital presented by the Thejaswini dance academy, trained by actress Rashmi Rajkhowa (more popularly known as Bhanu Rashmi in South India).

Named after the Colosseum, the largest ever built amphitheatre in the Roman Empire, the column saw the growth of quizzing talents like Sandeep Phukan, Prosenjit Dutta, Amiya Kumar Baruah, Maharnav Gogoi, Jayanta Kumar Nath, Umesh Saikia, Dipankar Koushik, Shyamolima Saikia and Dipak Kumar Sharma. The Colosseum family is proud that Maharnav Gogoi has made his mark in the national level quizzing scene and has also won quiz competitions abroad. Over the years, the column has been receiving maximum contributions from the districts of Nalbari, Barpeta, Kamrup, Darrang, Sivasagar, Dhubri, Lakhimpur and Nagaon. Contributing questions on a particular theme requires a lot of skills and patience, and, during The Colosseum Open Quiz Fest, 2008, the contributors of different districts were awarded trophies and certificates in recognition of their contributions to the column and their untiring efforts over the past ten years.

After the preliminary round of the event, six teams were selected for the Grand Finale, and teams Etesuqam (represented by Biswajyoti Saikia and Dipankar Koushik), Iskra (represented by Gautam Priyam Mahanta and Biswajeet Kumar Bora) and Cheap Monks (represented by Anurag Talukdar and Shalim M. Hussain) won the first, second and third prizes respectively. A total of 91 teams participated in the preliminary round. The winning teams were awarded attractive cash prizes along with two printers for the best team sponsored by the Datamation, gift hampers from ITC, grooming packages from VLCC and a one year subscription to The Eclectic magazine for all the finalist teams. The audience too were awarded attractive gift hampers from different companies for the correct answers given by them. The event was sponsored by Indian Oil, Assam Oil, State Bank of India, Blue Hill Travels, Reliance Mobile and Datamation. Altogether, prizes and cash worth more than Rs.1,00,000/- were awarded to the winners and the audience in the event. The prizes were given away by Prof. Dilip Kumar Barua and actress Bhanu Rashmi. The media partners of the event were News Live, BIG 92.7 FM and The Eclectic magazine.

The event was unique in the sense that in recent years, the Guwahatians have seen quiz competitions which are more westernised, without giving much importance to the cultures of the North-East. It could be noticed that while the theme of this quiz event was ‘culture’, much importance was given to the culture of North-East India, more particularly to the culture of Assam. Yet, there were sufficient number of questions based on the cultures of different parts of the world. The research team for the quiz event included Prosenjit ‘Piklu’ Dutta, Jusmita Borah and the quiz columnists of The Assam Tribune, and the event was managed by Mukesh Ray. The quiz masters who took the stage during the event with their mind-boggling questions were Prof Dilip Kumar Barua, the father of quizzing in North-East India, Dr Amarjyoti Choudhury (another pioneer of quizzing in North-East India), Neelotpal Deka and Sailen Baishya, the quiz columnists of The Assam Tribune. It is to be noted that for the first time, the people of North-East India witnessed a quiz competition conducted by four quiz masters together. The event was compered by Dipak Sharma and Kankana Goswami.

Trishnali Neog