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Brainstorm
Arunava Das
IT was a moment made memorable by a master and a maestro. The occasion was the “final” of the BBC University Challenge Quiz. What could be a grander finale to an event than Pandit Ravi Shankar giving away the winner’s trophy with his head almost bowed and wearing a heavenly smile. Just before that, Siddhartha Basu had conducted a nerve-wracking and gut-wrenching contest of knowledge and courage.
Despite their popularity, there is something understated about both Ravi Shankar and Siddhartha Basu. Both are very private and very resourceful men and they would like to keep it that way. They don’t like to propel themselves into the headlines. They can’t help it if they make headlines.
The 50ish-year-old Siddhartha must be a great planner – he conceptualised the hugely popular Kaun Banega Crorepati that marked the return of the Big B to the world of entertainment — who can’t really remember how many popular quiz programmes he had conceived and conducted.
“Not really a planner,” says wife Anita Kaul Basu. “He is rather a man who never stops thinking.” Then she tries to give a rough sketch of how her husband goes about his job. “Do you remember Rodin’s famous creation, The Thinker? He resembles that sculpture every time he is trying to do something new,” Anita chuckles, mixing a fun element in her “dispassionate” assessment of her husband. “For him, every format is a challenge and he does it with great effort and finesse,” she says, now seriously.
Sure, the University Challenge is another illustration of the thinker, who, this time, has devised a middle path, a cross between the middle-school standard KBC and BBC Mastermind, which, for more than an average audience, is as difficult as James Joyce’s Ulysees.
The University Challenge is more a sport than a contest of pure knowledge. It contains all the attached frills and thrills and demands a lot of nerves. Like in table tennis, in which the ping pong ball oscillates fast between one end of the table and the other, or in badminton, in which you keep winning points as long as you can hold on to the serve, and the slog-overs in the cricket one-dayers when batsmen are required to step on to the middle of the pitch for Miandad-like smashes, the University Challenge tells you: hit-out-or-get-out is the end-game strategy.
It’s easier said than done, though. Not only knowledge, it is the grit and courage to take risks at crucial moments that make the Karur Vysya Bank and Sumo Victa-sponsored University Challenge an extraordinary spectacle.
About 350 four-member teams from the country’s top colleges and universities entered the competition, with 24 teams selected for the television rounds of the quiz that has been based on a popular British show running since 1962.
The team (Indian Institute of Management) from Kozhikode — a beautiful but small, placid town in Kerala — lacked those traits. And if one is curious to make an analysis of why and how the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology could pull off an incredible victory, one of the answers could be that its contestants are from the country’s capital city, which induces a win-win confidence among those who live in it.
The Delhi quartet was losing heavily for the greater part of the 40-minute contest. But the way Rohan Murarka, Abhishek Dimri, KK Mukund and Anish Johnson pulled themselves together and the lightning quickness with which they pressed the buzzer in the crucial starter round and thus qualified for three bonus questions reminded us of that unforgettable football World Cup match in England in 1966. Asian team North Korea was ahead by three goals but Europe’s Portugal made a fairytale comeback to win 5-3.
If Eusebio was the man who scripted that epic turnaround in that match, it was the 22-year-old engineering student Rohan Murarka who piloted the New Delhi team’s dramatic victory. It earned the fortune to receive the trophy from the Bharat Ratna sitarist who was present as the Guest of Honour at Delhi’s hi-tech Eagle Studio at Noida along with wife Sukanya.
The would-be managers from Kerala, however, had their chance but squandered it, at the decisive moment.
With the score level at 200-200, the starter question from Siddhartha was: Published in 1867, the first volume of which seminal book is dedicated “To my unforgettable friend, Wilhelm Wolff. Intrepid, faithful, noble protagonist of the proletariat.”?
One of the Kozhikode contestants pressed the buzzer quicker than his rivals but flunked. “Communist Manifesto,” was his (wrong) reply. That was the capital blow for IIM Kozhikode. The correct answer was Das Kapital. And it was at that point that it was clear that the prestigious trophy (only that, there was no cash-or-kind award and one of the winners complained about it in private) would stay in Delhi.
“This year the *University Challenge has given us some of the country’s best and brightest young minds. They fought their way, displayed great solo efforts as well as terrific teamwork and churned out some great and exciting moments,” said Siddhartha.
Sure, he wasn’t exaggerating. Even Ravi Shankar was seen biting his nails. So was the rest of the audience, especially in those make-or-break moments before the hooter provided a sort of relief. “I’m not even a matriculate and amazed to see the level of intellect that these boys displayed,” was how Ravi Shankar expressed himself at the end of the show.
The Basu family management arrangements may also prove a sticking point. And unsurprisingly Anita, the wife, is the real manager, a great communicator herself. But she has chosen to allow her husband to hog the limelight. Behind every successful man, there is a woman. And Anita suffers from no insecurity, either of being a middle-aged woman, or a kind of *abhiman (ego problem) that happens between (high-profile) couples at one point of their relationship or the other. The Basus present perfect synergy both in the manner they work and the way things are executed.
Anita, a woman of substance, was educated in the UK. But the only reason why she quit the land of riches and comfort, parents and friends and came to India was “Siddhartha”. In fact, her eyes light up when she recalls the day Siddhartha bought a bicycle and their first ride together. And that happy journey is still on.
“It’s natural to have my wife, my best friend in whatever I do. I wanted to build something to last, to make something for us both. Who else knows as much about the way I imagine as my wife does,” asks the husband.
The new Basu brochure will boast the return of the KBC, and of course, with Amitabh Bachchan, who else. Recreating KBC is the first step. The process has begun. “For us, it means we will begin to know a lot more about the Indian audience.”
Indeed, Siddhartha’s conversation is peppered with talk of creativity, challenge, bench-marking and popular appeal.
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