Bazinga ’16

The Literary, Debate, and Quiz club’s annual intra-MU lit fest kicked off on April 1st and concluded on the 4th. They had a wide range of events on offer.

Potpourri

The first event in a series of crowd pullers in the literary festival of Bazinga’16, organized by the Literary and Debate club, got off to an exuberant start on the first of April. The first round was an elimination round that consisted of a thirty minute written paper laced with homonyms, ciphers and anagrams that left all the students scratching their heads and wearing expressions of bewilderment that would seem more appropriate during an end semester exam. This round also included a spelling bee question in which contestants had to write the spelling of a word based on its pronunciation in a garbled audio clip.

Six teams with quirky names like ‘The Donald Trumpets’ moved on to the final round which in itself was divided into three parts. The first part of the round was Charades but with an interesting twist. Two members of the team were to act it out while the third one was to guess the movie. But what made it amusingly difficult was the fact that only one of the contestants was allowed use his arms and the other to use his legs and face in order to act out the movie. The next part was a modified version of Pictionary in which one contestant had to draw a phrase on the board, the second had to act it out to the third who had to guess the phrase. The audience were again left in splits when students unsuccessfully attempted to draw vague hints seeming rather like our primate ancestors who drew in caves. The last part was the game of Taboo. But there was a catch, each team had to predict the number of words guessed in a span of two minutes, if they guessed more than the prediction bonus points would be given and if they guessed less words than their prediction, then negative points would be awarded. This game changing wager gave underdogs a shot at victory, a chance to go big or go home.

The event succeeded in delighting not only its participants, but also its enthusiastic spectators with its humorous twists in everyday games.

-Shagun Nevatia

JAM (Just A Minute)

If the JAM had to be summarised with one word, it would be ‘WOW’. The event not only saw a horde of participants, but also a stampede of audience members, who wanted to enjoy the sheer confusion  with which the participants tried talking about the very ‘not so generic’ topics.

From arguing about why tennis players don’t get married because love means nothing to them, to life being alluded to a bowl of soup because you only get blown if you’re hot; the Jam often entailed bursts of laughter followed by an absolute pin drop silence, always broken by the banging of the table by one of the contestants.

The event rested on the basic premise of speaking continuously for as long as possible without getting ‘JAM’med for a mistake by the other participants. Try catching an LnD member and getting them to explain it to you. If you missed it this time, make sure you’re there the next time.

-Dhruv Suri

Slam Poetry

Emotions flowed, in a ceaseless stream
Every syllable held a meaning
And every pause made a noise.
Some hearts were forlorn, some
Were in love, but all had poetry in them.

On Saturday, the 2nd of April, MIT witnessed its first slam poetry competition. 13 poets took the stage one after another to let out their emotions and vent their anger in rhythmic verse, and soon the room was smelling of poetry and the souls of those listening were infused with the beauty of subtle wordplay and strong language. When the competition was finished, the poetry in the air would not let them leave and the verses continued, everyone was craving for more. Poetry was truly celebrated that night.

It was a structured event with each person given a stage time of three minutes. He or she was judged by five spectators chosen randomly and changed for every participant by the organisers. The competition gave a platform to all the poets who never had an audience. Some poets expressed their anger at the present, some spoke about their desires and dreams.

The Competition started a little off schedule but the organisers were efficient in pulling off the event hassle free. The event lasted for an hour and a half. With poets expressing themselves without inhibition.

Lasya Lakshmi, president of LnD, said, ”LnD is more than happy with the turnout, we are going to start a ‘Slam Poet’s society’ and make it a regular thing.” All the secluded poets who want to test their mettle will now have an opportunity.

-Pranav Parashar

SciTechBiz Quiz
The SciTechBiz quiz , took place on Sunday, the 3rd of April. The event drew students eager to prove their mettle and take home the coveted title of first place. The quiz consisted of two rounds, the first was the elimination round in which the participants struggled
with questions that hid in their deceptively easy appearance, subtle hints pointing to the answer that they desired. The quiet sound of pens rustling on paper was punctuated only by ejaculations of protest from the contestants lest the quiz master move too fast. Six teams
qualified and made it to the finals.

The final round was divided into four parts. The first part consisted of differential scoring in which participants were awarded marks based on the number of teams who had got the answer right. The second part consisted of a question answer round with infinite bounce and
pounce. The third part of the quiz was a visual round where contestants had to guess the answer based on suggestive images.  The last part was structured just like the second where participants risked it all in a last bid to overtake their opponents. The rounds were made
interesting with the quiz master’s acrimonious yet polite tone which bit back at any foolish doubts from ignorant quizzers inducing laughter from the crowd.

The quiz succeeded in whetting the curiosity of students about the realm of science, technology and business which is invariably the goal of any good quiz.

-Shagun Nevatia

Football Quiz

In what has been a frenzied year in the quizzing circuits of Manipal, we saw that fever culminate with the much—awaited
football quiz. First of its kind in the last year, this quiz garnered a lot of interest among the people . The event had a very large turnout.
All the participants who thought that football is their “thing” came with a lot of enthusiasm but it can’t be said that all of them left with the
same after the prelims. The questions were tricky and at the same time workable. The quizmasters did an amazing job setting up
the questions. The questions were not at all trivia based since the quizmasters were more interested in knowing about Liverpool’s
anthem than how many goals Gerrard scored in his last Premiere League season.

The top eight teams qualified for the finals, the cut-off being 18 out of 38 in the prelims. The finals were not so different from the
prelims, the questions being on the same line. The finals had four rounds. And during the end of those four rounds , during which the lead changed four times, a group of first years won the quiz.

-Shreyan Datta Chakraborty

Story Building

What happened in this event? The answer is naked ghost teachers, Osama Bin Laden being a moral science professor, a love story between Donald Trump and an alcoholic dinosaur and more sarcasm.

The above lines basically describe what went down in the Bazzinga event named as story building. Even though the turnout was low, the creativeness and the element of imagination in this event was worth of a larger participation.

The contest simply put was an imagination contest, to see the limits of imaginations of the participating students. It was a first of its kind conducted here in MIT. A meticulous test of judging the impromptu story constructing abilities of the participating contestants.

An arbitrary prompt was given by the moderator to the participants standing in a straight line on the podium. They were supposed to continue the story by adding their own piece of imagination, but rule was not to contradict any fact provided by the contestant before you. The final round had a further twist on the concept with each participant being given a different character to play.

-Sudhanshu Kadre

Creative Writing

Bazinga, ended with Creative Writing as one of the final events. Writing, at times, is a form of art not appreciated fully, but in this event, the creativity of even the organising team showed itself marvelously.

This, unlike most creative writing scenarios, had very innovative prompts. Three were written while three were pictorial. Participants had the choice to write any one of the six. Two of the topics included a rough outline of a character. A basic use of adjectives for the character that must be the centre of the story. One of them was of a Recluse who loves music, has a different perspective, and likes things that
may otherwise be perceived pretentious. This would be a very interesting character to build a story on.

Kudos to the team for coming up with such a great idea. The picture prompts did have a lot of irony, of children with guns, and of a man drinking alcohol with a woman in a burka. All of these would get your creativity gushing through, and if you missed this event,
you missed a great chance to write something greatly satisfying.

-Qais Akolawala