Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Arohon 2010 NIT Durgapur

Titash, Debanjan, Jishu & me went to Durgapur on 6th March 2010, to attend the quizzes at Arohon.

We made an early start, catching a bus from Karunamoyee at 7:30 AM. En route the bus halted at Shaktigarh, the "Langcha Capital of the world". And it truly was !!!

Everywhere we looked we saw "Langcha". There was a Langcha Palace, Langcha Cottage, Langcha House, Langcha Hall, Langcha Mahal and a lot more I can't recollect. And for those of you who don't know, "Langcha" is a kind of sweet quite popular here in Bengal. The shape as some of you would know might turn off guys !! Then again I should add it might turn off "some" guys !!

We reached Durgapur in the afternoon & had to wait quite a while for the General Quiz to start.

Mr. Arul Mani conducted the quiz in which around 30 teams sat in the prelims. We were quite surprised to see very few out station teams as usually Arohon is quite a popular destination for college quizzers in Eastern India. But who were we to complain.

The prelims had some fantastic questions. Mr. Mani is known for his question framing and this time too he did a great job hoodwinking people with his clever choice of words.

We made the finals along with 5 teams from NIT Durgapur where the first round was truly a pain both for the eyes and the brain !!

The projector wasn't working well in the daylight & the first round was identifying celebrities from portraits of them as kids !!!

And the list included Aung San Su Kyi & the current head of North Korea !!

It was perhaps the first time in my entire experience of quizzing that a round went by without any team troubling the scorers.

The main quiz started and instantly the questions got better. We raced off into a lead and held on till the end. It got quite interesting towards the end as we had suffered a lot of negative points but we just about finished first.

The next quiz to be hosted by Arnab Sinha was titled the "Final Frontier". Arohon always has late night quizzes and this was one of them. It was scheduled for 11 PM. It was meant for 3 member teams from the same college, which sadly meant Titash would be sitting alone.

It also meant we had a lot of time to kill before the 11 PM start and so Debanjan suggested we walk to the Damodar barrage "nearby".

Jishu wasn't ready to go. So we had a vote with Jishu losing 3-1. It's the last time I'm voting for anything Debanjan suggests !!

We spent the next 3 hours walking around asking people how to get to the barrage. Everybody seemed to think it was just a 15 minute walk away. The roads were like dust bowls and all of us were covered in grime within the first 5 minutes of the expedition. Tired & hungry & thirsty & lost, we wandered about like madmen in search of Utopia by the Damodar barrage side.

I had visions of dipping my feet into the cool water of the Damodar. In my vision, for some reason I was playing a Sarangi as I let the cool waters of the Damodar wash my feet !! I was taken aback at first but then realised why I had suddenly thought of playing a Sarangi.

Rani Laxmi Bai's horse was called Sarangi & her son was named Damodar Rao !!
Years of quizzing has done this to my psyche !! I see connections everywhere !!

Anyway after hours of walking we decided to give it up. All our efforts seemed fruitless and so we reluctantly turned the other way cursing our luck !!

Final Frontier started a bit late, around 12 AM & it was an open air quiz. We made it to the stage where Arnab did a good quiz. Jishu was in good form and we won quite easily.

We spent the night in the room of a school pal of Debanjan & Jishu.

Next morning it was time for the Sports & Entertainment quiz conducted by Mr. Arul Mani again. Again his questions were impeccable & the framing out of this world. And given the line up we had for this quiz it was no surprise when we came out on top !! I am not boasting !! We really did have a quiz team, half of which was entertainment heavy & the other half sports heavy !!

Me & Titash left after the quiz & after a long bus ride reached Kolkata late on the night of 7th March. It had been the most successful quiz trip of my life !! A strike rate of 100%.

But again in today's IPL world 100% is nothing !!

Some questions from Arohon :

Q) This activity which involves 30 bone joints & 50 muscles, has been practised in this country for centuries and experts believe it is the reason for the country's dominance in a certain sport. Namr the activity, the sport & the country ?

Ans: Use of chopsticks, table tennis & China

Q) A poem written by the man who inspired RL Stevenson to create Long John silver has been in the news recently. What is this poem ?

Ans : Invictus

This was a starred question in the prelim
Q) In the parliament what are questions that are meant to be answered orally on the same day called ?

Ans : Starred questions !!

Q) Which 8 letter misnomer is used to describe the silverfish ? Silverfish itself is a misnomer

Ans) Bookworm. Silverfish is an insect, so neither a worm or a fish !!

Q) Which book got it's title from the mishearing of a poem by Robert Burns ?

Ans) Catcher in the Rye

1 comment:

Rajarshi Som said...

Hey, the spelling is Aarohan, not Arohon.

I remember Jishu and Debanjan promising me treats :-)