The Quiz Competition

 

“Hey girls! Listen ! We need to report to Saluja ma’am soon after picking up the lots”. Hearing my name chirped out I involuntarily turned to see one of my students shouting at her group of friends, the enthusiastic skit participants who were rushing into the auditorium to pick up their lots.

Seated at its entrance, my eyes were eagerly looking out for the pair of timid but intelligent quizzers who had gone to the block opposite, to take up quiz prelims. Lo! I saw them both strolling towards me. I tried to read out the results of the Prelims from their typically inexpressive face. But, all in vain.

As they stepped closer, I was telling ,myself “Salu, they should win.” God answered my heart’s desire. Rosy, the cheerful of the two said to me that they had been selected. I tried to peer into Josephine’s specs to reach her eyes just to figure out her feelings. But again, all in vain.

I wondered what was really going on with her. In a jiffy, the selected pairs were asked to assemble for the quiz and so did Rosy and Josephine. The main Quiz competition began on the stage. I was intensely but in a composed manner watchinng the four different rounds they have gone by.

The scores of each of the group announced at the end of every round were too unpredictable. And so were Josephine, the final year student and Rosy, her immediate junior, the most unassuming pair on the stage.

At the final round- the AV round- the video clipping, at a graveyard with two or three ordinary men and a prince popped upon the huge screen. It was Josephine and Rosy’s turn. They were asked to name the play in which it appears. It was a direct question to my students. I saw both of them staring at it. Seconds were ticking away. The Quiz Master smiled at them cynically. The students from the host and the guest colleges were excited.

I heard my heart pounding louder and faster than usual. Still, I feigned to be unruffled. Just 3 seconds, No two aaand I heard Josephine blurting out ‘HAMLET’ and the next moment her eyes from behind the glasses glittered with a line of  smile on her lips entreating me if she had made me proud by answering correctly what I taught her the last semester.

Tears rolled out of my eyes not at the booming applause resounding Josephine and Rosy’s victory but the subtle yet powerful way in which my student recognized me as her teacher.

What a noble gesture of recognizing the taught Saluja, the Maanavi grasped.

BLOOPERS: Years later when I showed her this writing to Josephine, she said-
“Proud to be your student”“Mixed emotions of making my teacher proud, telling the right answer in front of her”“ And also happy of how you acknowledged my peeping by patting on your chest ma’am”I asked her, “Did I?”