10 remarkable things about Udghosh 2015

We toiled. We spammed. We succeeded! If the author was a poet, he would have put it this way - so many people worked so hard to make Udghosh a success that the entire universe conspired to make sure that it was one. The author is no bard and a bit bald and all he can say that it was helluva event!
Qutopia's annual flagship event, Udghosh concluded successfully on Sunday, 13th December this month. After the grand success of Udghosh 2014, there were a lot of expectations from the event this year. There is no denying the fact that all those expectations have been fulfilled.

The participants started making a beeline to the auditorium as early as 8.30 AM but our volunteers were present there even before (some of whom spent the night at the KSAC). After all the participants had done registering themselves, the show was handed over to Mr. Vikram Joshi. 

Crapanalytics has come up with a list of ten remarkable things that characterized Udghosh 2015. 

1. It was huge

This is not a movie screening. These are participants at Udghosh!

Yeah, like literally huge with 457 teams participating. The king size Campus-6 Auditorium was filled to capacity. This year’s Udghosh beat its predecessor in terms of number of people participating. This makes Udghosh 2015 the largest open quiz in Eastern India. The participants varied from school students to academics and corporates. For some, it was an event much awaited while for the others, it was a Sunday well spent. For the organizers, it was like watching their baby come to life.

2. The QM rocked

The QM who rocked : Mr. Vikram Joshi

Vikram Joshi, upon whom a lot of hopes rested, did an excellent job. The QM rocked the stage not with a guitar but with mind blowing quiz questions. The QM was an epitome of patience, taking his time to explain the questions to the participants in the prelims and giving them ample time think. In the finals, the QM listened carefully to all the answers the finalists gave. The right ones received points while the wrong ones fetched a polite no from the QM.

3. It was a fabulous set of questions

Like this funda? There is a lot more where that came from

A QM can perform well only when he is backed by a good set of questions. Our QM was backed by a fabulous set that he brought along with vada pavs. The prelims were a bit difficult. Although, Jyoti Prakash Panda and Saransh Mohapatra were able to score 22 out of 30, thereby emerging as the highest scorers in the prelims. The prelims contained questions based on audio visuals along with others. The finals were as good as the prelims and had the finalists scratching their heads on some.

 4. The winners were awesome

Aryapriya Ganguly and Avinash Mudaliar, the winners

Dalma kuch kala hona ho, protein zaroor hai.
Team Aadvarks a.k.a. Dalma Kuch Kala Hai consisting of Aryapriya Ganguly and Avinash Mudaliar were the winners. Their win can be attributed to protein rich diet consisting mainly of dal which is reflected in long facial hair of Avinash.
The Doctor and his patient-in 3D i.e. Dr. Suby Bhattacharya and Kunal Malhotra were the Runners-Up while Somnath Chanda and Soubhadra Chakraborty who had named their team "The Intolerables" were the Second Runners-Up.

The other finalists were:
Slim and Shady (Saransh Mohapatra and Jyoti Parakash Panda)
Excelsior (Gaurav Jena and Debjit Tripathy)
Naam Mein Kya Rakha Hai? (Mukti Swarup Pradhan and Baibaswata Jena)
Cow Tse Tung (Nishant Nihar and Priyambad Pattanayak)
Tom's Dick Harry a.k.a Binary (Abhinav Dhar and Siddharth Mishra)

Dr. Suby Bhattacharya and Kunal Malhotra

Somnath Chanda and Soubhadra Chakrabarty

5. The prizes were awesome too

As promised, the winners walked away with their giant cheques of Rs. 75000 

(like literally giant)

The runners up with Rs. 50000 and the second runners up with Rs. 25000.
Madhurima Dutta and Sreeja Shambhavi, who were the highest scoring Girls' Team got special prizes from B21 and Jovees.
All the other finalists got gifts too. Owing to a separate competition for the best team name, we saw the teams coming up with innovative team names. One of the teams came up with the name "I quizzed a girl and I liked it". It was eventually chosen as the best team name and the team got a special prize. A special prize was given to the highest scoring school team too.
Off-stage, people were showered with audience prizes and those who registered early, got early bird gifts. The organizers are confident that some of those who came to Udghosh will be able to give Santa a pass this year.

De ja vu? They won it last year and they won it this year too!

 6. We had some distinguished guests and visitors

Mr. Anil Vajpayee along with his team mate for the quiz

Mr. Anil Vajpayee who is the honorable Director of KSOM, was there throughout the event.
Omkar Amrutanshu, our alumni and a legendary senior was also there throughout the event. His towering figure (at above 6.5 feet) will always be a source of inspiration. Mohit Dayal and Santosh Bhaiya were also there.
Dr. Sucheta Priyabadini and Prof. P.P. Mathur, our honorable Vice-Chancellor handed over the prizes to the winners.

Thats not a skyscraper. That is Omkar Amrutanshu!

Mohit and Sachin Bhaiyas

7. We had our heroes

To get the event running on stage, a lot of people worked behind the scenes too. One blog post can't mention everybody, but there are some people who led from the front and saw the event to its conclusion. Aman Sinha, Abhinav Dhar, Shovna Mohapatra and Arko Biswas lead the charge and coordinated the organisation of the event.

Aman Sinha had pledged not to take a bath till the event gets over

                             (He has still not taken a bath)

  With a great deal of effort, the author was able to 

find this photo where Miss. Mohapatra failed to pose

Mr. Dhar flaunting his crop of the No Shave November, well into December

Mr. Arko Biswas : He is a real page turner

Siddharth Mishra, Lalit Mundhra, Souradeep Dey, Souradip Chatterjee, Raunak Ghosh and Abinash Sahu persistently raided prospective sponsors at their homes and offices and arranged those amazing coupons and gifts.

Coca Cola is the secret of his energy

Mr. Mundhra : He has got the moves like Jagger

Post Udghosh, Mr. Souradeep Dey has flown to the north pole
 to assume his responsibilities as Santa Claus

Clockwise from top: Souradip, Raunak, Sachin and Abinash

Nihal Nayak, Rohan Rakesh, Asif Ghazi, Akanksha Priya, Gourav Jeet Nair, Rahil Sur and Shalini Rai took up the task of publicity and made sure everyone knew about the event.

The Dark Knight (Nihal), with his sidekicks: Gaurav and Avinash

Asif  welcoming participants with his beautiful smile

Akansha taking in the necessary calories before the event

Rahil : This pic was so heavy, it took forever to put it up

Rohan Rakesh and Shalini Rai

Abhishek Sengupta, Sreeja Shambhavi and Ankita Das came up with those amazing posters which we proudly spammed you with.

Sreeja : We've got a bad ass over here 

Abhishek Sengupta and Ankita Das

8. It was truly an open quiz

The quiz saw participation from school kids and also from their parents who came to drop them off and later decided to participate. Udghosh was for everyone and those who participated ranged from being corporates to professors.

9. We had people talking about Udghosh

Udghosh became a buzz word no only in KIIT, but also in quizzing community elsewhere. Udghosh became a topic of discussion in quizzing circles from Delhi to Mumbai to Hyderabad and participants came from far flung places just to participate in the event. 

10. At the end of the day, everyone left with a smile

Everyone who participated got a participation certificate and a gift.
Watching VJ take a quiz thereafter was a treat and a lot of people stayed till the end. VJ was thrilled with the enthusiasm of the participants and the welcome he received. He has promised to come back next year too and make it a hat-trick. For the organizing team, satisfaction of a job well done was the ultimate reward which they topped up with large quantities of Coca-Cola.

The OC, the alumni, the QM

  These amazing pictures have been taken by Debjeet Sarkar and Prateek Das.