Have you ever seen tabla maestro Zakir Hussain play the role of a quiz master? If you haven’t, you must log on to the grand finale of an ongoing quizzing event on June 27 that will see past and present students of IIT Kharagpur competing against each others’ halls of residences.
Zakir Hussain has agreed to be a guest quiz master for the event that is being conducted to raise funds for the contractual and casual workers of IIT Kharagpur, who are going through a difficult phase, caused by the Covid pandemic.
Along with Hussain, the other three celebrity guest quiz masters are, Siddhartha Basu, Harsha Bhogle and Vikas Swarup, who have all been associated with the world of quiz in one way or the other. The initiative has been taken by past and present students together to help these workers, who have nothing beyond the IIT ecosystem to take care of them or their families.
The idea revolves around the famed undergraduate inter-hall rivalry at the institute. Each undergraduate hall has always slogged it out against the next for generations and this has now come in handy for this extremely entertaining initiative. A fund of Rs 40 lakhs has already been collected through donations. Links for these are provided on social media platforms, where alumni are connecting to donate. Past students have connected with the current residences of the halls and teams have been formed, which have been participating in online intra-hall quiz.
Alumni from the past 50 batches have connected for this and teams for the final day’s quizzing has been selected. “You will see 18-year-olds participating with 68-year-olds in inter-generation and inter-hall rivalry. Not only that, the teams will see participants from different time zones,” said Aditya Nath Jha, spokesperson for the event and a 1968-batch chemical engineering student, who is now an animation film producer.
While the alumni have accessed the donation link from the social media and pledged to donate, there is another donation link that will come on for every viewer when the questions are asked at the grand finale. Those who have pledged, will get an email from IIT Foundation, which is collecting the donation, reminding them of their pledge. The oldest participant is Kumar Deshpande, a 1976 pass out, who lives in Mumbai.
Source:Times of India
