Madras Day - Quiz

The Madras week celebration ends with an English Quiz on Madras ie Chennai on the final day, the Sunday succeeding Aug, 22, the Madras founding day. This used to be a general quiz and open to all with spot registration.

The previous day, the Tamil Medium Schools in Chennai will have Quiz Programme in the afternoon. The winning School will get a Rolling Shield and individual prizes.

This year the Tamil quiz took place on 23 rd Aug, Saturday at Srinivasa Sastri Hall in Luz. Around 20 Schools took part in prelims including some corporation schools.
6 teams were selected for final.

The questions were neither very tough nor very easy. Raja Muthiah and Rani Meiyammai

tied for the first place and finally Rani Meiyammai won the first prize.

This quiz programmes are conducted exclusively by Mylapore Times, a weekly neighbourhood newspaper, published by Mr.Vincent D’souza.

Earlier there was a power point presentation competition on Heritage of Chennai for Schools on 19.08.08 at the same venue, Sastri Hall. There were 20 participating schools. The effort the students had taken to document the history was praiseworthy and it is immaterial which school won the prize. But it was unfortunate that there was only one entry in Tamil and even that could not be projected due to non availability of font.

Mr. Vincent, while addressing the students, gave some useful tips to improve and also said that there is another 1 year time to plan and do the document in the best possible way in the year 2009, which will fall on 18th Aug ,2009.

I have a request to Mr. Vincent. All English medium students have the background, facility and exposure to do these kinds of things. But the Tamil medium schools, when I was talking to them, were not even aware of such a competition. Where was the problem?
Can Mylapore Times take some extra effort to involve them? The students of these schools are from middle and lower middle class families, some even from the families of servant maids, labourers, small vendors, hawkers ect. They need to be supported and encouraged. There is 1 year time to ponder over this.

Let us now move on to the grand finale, the Madras Quiz in English open to public on 24.08.08. This was arranged in Gokale Hall in Karpagambal Nagar, Mylapore.
The prelims was for teams of two, either students, senior citizens or any age group falling under general category. The questions were a bit tough, may be because the organizers planned to filter at prelim stage itself.

The final 6 teams included one ladies team and another senior citizens team.

There were 12 rounds with 6 questions in each round.

The finals started at around 3.30 on the Sunday afternoon.

The entire hall with 200 odd people (a little bit cramped, but no problem) of assorted age group was fully charged.

The questions, some simple, some tough, some thought provoking, some yielding to wild guess kept the audience and the fighting teams at the edge of their seats.

The quiz master Mr. Vincent D’souza kept everyone tuned and the ambiance light hearted, informal and a feast to the brains.

The teams were almost equally poised, but of course the first and second teams had slight edge over others throughout.

The senior citizens Mrs. & Mr. Ganesan came 4th and were highly appreciated by the crowd.

Again it is not the question of winner or runner. It is the participation that counts.

For more than 2 hours time Mr. Vincent and his Mylapore Times team gave the public an intellectual entertainment as the finale of Madras Week.

The spark may gather momentum in the coming years, who knows one day the Government may declare a holiday on 22nd Aug. for Madras, ie Chennai residents.