MELA Quiz Finals IIT BHU Kashiyatra 2018

THE MELA QUIZ
FINALS
Kashiyatra’18
IIT BHU Varanasi
By
Mahendra Mohan Das

MAHENDRA MOHAN DAS 2
Cheers to our sponsor:

 Clockwise, 10 questions
 +10 on bounce
 +15/-10 on pounce
 You can pounce on your own question (and get the next question direct again,
but only once)
 -20 for pissing me by blurting out the answer or otherwise
Round 1

 “When I made the decision to choose the ___ over the voice, it was out of
sheer passion. Of course, my uncle and guru Pt. X Y was inspiration enough to go
ahead with my decision. Once I began to learn to play the instrument, I realized
the challenges of exploring the many layers of raags through it and the
disadvantage of not being guided by lyrics. Yet, I made __ my life’s calling.” Z Y
said this in an interview.
 “Z and Friends” is an Indian fusion group led by Z Y, nephew and disciple of
Maestro Pandit X Y. They have performed all over the world.
 Identify Z Y.
1) Continuing the family legacy

 Nephew of Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia
Rakesh Chaurasia

 The movie X was supposed to be a drama, but during the writing process, Y
found the vast majority of the political calamities described in the story to be
inherently funny, and wholeheartedly embraced the dark humour.
 Perhaps one of the most legendary deleted scene in the history of cinema, X’s
original ending involved the entire room engaging in a madcap pie fight. It
begins with the Soviet Ambassador hurling a custard pie at the American officer,
but missing and hitting the President instead.
 But Y felt that the scene simply didn’t work creatively, and hence the iconic
ending scene was created.
 Which iconic satirical movie (that inspired actual changes in international
policy) and the director?
2) The love for satire

 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dr. Strangelove; Stanley Kubrick

 This famous song by Queen, is largely known for its music video for which all
the band members dressed in women's clothes, which parodied the long-
running ITV soap opera Coronation Street. Queen bass player John Deacon
wrote this from the male perspective of the women's liberation movement.
 Because of its lyrics, this song became an anthem for the ANC in South Africa
in the late-'80s when Nelson Mandela was still in jail and the white
government's apartheid policies were still in place.
 However, for the new generation, this song became an earworm when the
antagonist of a famous TV series is seen listening to this song in an iconic scene
(quite apt to the lyrics) in the latest season finale in 2017.
 Which song? (photograph follows)
3) What do you want?

What do you want?

 Jim Moriarty listening to "I Want to Break Free" while arriving on Sherrinford
Island.
I Want to Break Free

 “The character of X had always been in my mind, like that Michelangelo
analogy about a sculpture already being in the marble.” Y, the creator of X, said
in an interview.
 X has won every major industry award, including the 1991 World Fantasy
award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to be awarded a literary
award. In its later years, it outsold Superman and Batman comics. It sells over a
million copies a year; the collections have sold over 750,000 copies in trade
paperback and hardback.
 Fairy tales and mythology (especially Norse) has huge influence on other
works of Y as well.
 Identify X and Y, the famous Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker award winning author.
4) Dream success

Sandman, Neil Gaiman

 In July 2009, Y wrote on his blog that “X is not a book about Asperger's... if
anything it's a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the
world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any
specific disorder.“
 This Whitbread Book Awards, Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Guardian
Children's Fiction Prize winner was unusually published simultaneously in
separate editions for adults and children.
 The title X quotes Sherlock Holmes in A C Doyle's 1892 short story "Silver
Blaze".
 (Hints will be given if no team objects)
5) Unusual book

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would
wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To ______________________."
Gregory: "The ___ did nothing."
Holmes: "That was the __."
Unusual book

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any
other point to which you would wish to draw my
attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in
the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

 This is a painting by Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry,
painted in 1860. The lady seems to be hiding or
trying to get away from something.
 Who is she? Alternately, what is she doing at
that place? Put funda.
6) Why such secrecy?

 Subject of Death of Marat by David as well.
Charlotte Corday, killed Jean-Paul Marat

 X has a long and erratic history with award ceremonies, beginning with his
1963 Tom Paine award for civil rights, where he sympathized with JFK’s assassin
Lee Harvey Oswald.
 After that, the big award ceremonies he didn’t attend despite winning include
Oscar ceremony, Crown Prince of Spain’s ceremony to award the Prince of
Asturias medal, White House ceremony for National Medal for the Arts, and the
Nobel prize.
 “Here’s what I love about X: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be… He
didn't want to take a picture with me…comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his
head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left.
That was our only interaction with him.” the then President recalled about his
interaction with X in the White House.
7) Like a rebel

Bob Dylan

 Narayan Rajhans started his career with Kirloskar Natak Mandali in 1905. While
he was singing once in Pune, Lokmanya Tilak, who was in the audience,
reportedly patted Rajhans on the back after his performance and said that
Narayan was a “___ ___“.
 Thus he became famous with the name.
 Who?
8) Singing like a devotee

Bal Gandharva

 Gardens of these kind will be found all across the world. What are these kinds
of gardens called? (Funda verbally will be explained)
9) Dil garden garden

 With the flowers mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. The verses are
mentioned on the plaques.
Shakespeare Garden

 X was not open to most interpretative approaches to his most famous work, Y.
He famously objected when, in the 1980s, several women's acting companies
began to stage the play. "Women don't have prostates," said X, a reference to
the fact that a lead actor frequently has to leave the stage to urinate.
 In 1988, he unsuccessfully took a Dutch theatre company to court over this
issue.
 However, over the years, he clearly realized that the greater part of Y’s success
came down to the fact that it was open to a variety of readings and that this was
not necessarily a bad thing. He himself sanctioned one of the most famous
mixed-race productions of Y, performed at the Baxter Theatre in the University
of Cape Town.
 Identify X and Y.
10) Interpretations everywhere

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 Written round, 2 questions
 4 parts per question, +5/0 per correct part
 Answers will be checked at a random order
Round 2

 In an interview, Y said he originally conceived X as a reaction to Nixon’s
presidency. “It was really about the (W) War, and that was the period where
Nixon was trying to run for a second term…” He also described his creation as “A
large technological state going after a small group of freedom fighters.”
 He said in an audio commentary that the W served as his inspiration for the Z,
who were able to defeat a vastly superior opponent in spite of their primitive
weapons. Both the W and Zs were well-served by their “superior knowledge of
the local terrain and an ability to blend into that terrain.”
 Identify W, X, Y, Z. (5 points each)
1) Billion dollar anti-American propaganda?

 “A large technological state going after a small group of freedom fighters.”
(Vietnam) Vien Cong, Star Wars, George Lucas, Ewoks

 It is widely believed that A was B’s last painting, painted just days before she
died young at the age of 47 years old in the summer of 1954. After a careful
analysis of the painting and brushstrokes, some art critics argue that it was
actually painted much earlier but, sensing that her time was near, B added the
inscription “A" on her death bed as her famous last words.
 The famous band C, inspired by B’s "boldness”, named their album A. For the
cover art, however, they chose a different painting D instead, painted in 1830 by
E. As in B’s painting, the overall meaning of E’s painting also remains optimistic,
even in spite of its deathly overtones.
 Identify A, B, C & D/E. (5 points each)
2) Optimistic art

Viva la Vida, Frida Kahlo, Coldplay, Liberty Leading the People,
Eugene Delacroix

 Anti-clockwise, 10 questions
 +10 on bounce
 +15/-10 on pounce
 You can pounce on your own question (and get the next question direct again,
but only once)
 -20 for pissing me by blurting out the answer or otherwise
Round 3

 X was a close advisor to Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende. Though he
died of heart failure, In June 2013, a judge ordered that an investigation be
launched, following suggestions that X had been killed by the Pinochet regime
for his pro-Allende stance and political views. Chile’s Communist Party asked
Judge Mario Carroza to order the exhumation of the remains of the poet. The
investigations are still ongoing and results are expected to come by 2018.
 Ironically, this revolutionary poet always wrote in green ink because green is
the color of hope. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for a poetry
that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and
dreams".
 Who?
1) The messenger of hope

Pablo Neruda

 X is a 1984 American rock music mockumentary comedy film directed, co-
written, scored by, and starring Rob Reiner.
 In the movie, Di Bergi's interviews with St. Hubbins and Tufnel, the two
founders of a band, reveal that they are competent composers and musicians,
but are dimwitted and immature.
 While showing his guitar collection to Di Bergi, Tufnel claims that the band has
an amplifier with volume knobs that go to eleven. Di Bergi asks, "Why don't you
just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little
louder?" After a long pause, Tufnel replies, "These go to eleven.“
 Which movie? How has IMDb paid homage to this movie? (5 points each)
2) Rock the world

This is Spinal Tap, IMDb’s rating scale for this movie is out of 11
instead of 10

 Nrityagram is India's first modern Gurukul for Indian classical dances. It was
established by famous Odissi dancer Protima Bedi, wife of Kiran Bedi. The
residential school offers training in Indian classical dance forms, Odissi,
Mohiniattam, Kathak, Bharatnatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Manipuri, eight
hours a day, six days a week for seven years, following the ancient Guru-shishya
tradition.
 True to its spirit, who is the following temple inside Nrityagram decicated to?
 (Image on next slide)
3) Chance pe dance

Chance pe dance

Kelucharan Mohapatra

 In 1960’s, a representative of Air India complained to a world famous
personality about the adverse publicity the airline might suffer after a certain
incident, arguing, "It's scandalous, none of our aircraft has ever crashed; you
have done us a considerable wrong."
 Air India had cooperated with him and subsequently had correction done. But
the crashed aircraft's tail number still remained "VT", the country code for Indian
aircraft.
 Which incident? Who is the world famous personality?
4) Plain crash, plane crash

Tintin in Tibet

 2015: Greek financial crisis
 2014: Ebola virus breakout
 2013: Horse meat scandal
 2012: Complaints about rigged voting machine in US Presidential election
 2003: Siegfried and Roy got attacked by their co-star tiger
 2000s: The Rolling Stone’s concert performances
 Some of the lesser famous incidents in a long list. What is this list about?
 What are the more famous two entries in 2016 and 2017? (5 points each)
5) Gambling, anyone?

 2016: Donald Trump became POTUS
 2017: Disney acquired assets of 21st Century Fox
The Simpsons predictions about the future

 In the episode The Unicorn and The Wasp of Doctor Who, they travelled back
to 1926. While solving a mystery with the Doctor, X suffers because of the
connection to a mysterious necklace and becomes unconscious. The Doctor
realizes that this gave X temporary amnesia, and uses the TARDIS to quietly drop
X off near the Harrogate Hotel ten days later.
 Who is X? What is being explained in the episode?
6) Unsolved mysteries?

Disappearance of Agatha Christie

 The cast comprised three dogs, eight boats and 48 people as they congregated
in the sunny park. But, the titular locale was a favorite of prostitutes on the
prowl, so some historians suspect that fish are not what the fishing-pole-toting
woman in the scene was hoping to hook. The same speculation has arisen
around the lady with a monkey on a leash and a man on her arm.
 What is being described?
7) Hidden points

 By Georges Seurat
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

 Standing still for long stretches proved difficult for her, and she later wrote to
her sister, "I stood bravely, two or three days, whenever he was in the mood for
studying me as his pictures are studies…! But realized it to be too great an
effort…”
 During the Great Depression, the piece traveled America in a 13-city tour,
which included a stop at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and got featured in
postage stamps. Whereas in Canada, it was used as a recruitment poster called
“Fight for her”, urging men to enlist with the Irish Canadian Rangers and to fight
for the women in their lives.
 Originally known as “Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1”, how do we more
famously know this work of art as?
8) Grey is the new black?

Whistler’s Mother

 Numerous references to James Joyce's novel "Ulysses" can be found in this
movie. Both take place on June 16th, running into the early hours of June 17th.
Both involve a journey around a single city (Dublin/Vienna) and include a visit to
a graveyard. The lead’s real name is James (Joyce's first name) and, like Joyce, he
spent a long time wandering around the cities of Europe instead of going home.
 Interestingly, most of the script was re-written by the two lead actors. They
later expressed frustration that they were uncredited for their work. (though
later it was taken care of, leading them for two Oscar nominations). Even more
surprisingly, the screenplay was written in just eleven days.
 Which movie?
9) Searching for love and joys

 Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and a Richard Linklater masterpiece
Before Sunrise

 Two days after the sometimes-psychedelic X debuted, the Beatles’ Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band dropped. They each exemplified a similar
zeitgeist: X’s writer Y rocketed to the forefront of a pan-Latin American literary
movement called El Boom, which also included heavyweights such as Carlos
Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa. Everyone from intellectuals to blue-collar
laborers to sex workers bought and read and talked about the book. Its appeal
across class lines fed into a heady period rocked by political and cultural
upheaval. “It was seen as the first book to unify the Spanish-language literary
culture, long divided between Spain and Latin America, city and village,
colonizers and colonized,” writes Vanity Fair’s Paul Elie.
 X and Y?
10) The game changer

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez

 Written round, 2 questions
 4 parts per question, +5/0 per correct part
 Answers will be checked at a random order
Round 4

 Public started noticing this group of people (W) after the famous O. J. Simpson
trial. An Olympic gold medalist (X) got added to the list in 1991, who again came
to prominence in 2015. While a 2007 film based on Y, the female lead, added
fuel to W’s popularity, they decided to leverage that by hosting a television
show, Z.
 This show has received very poor critical reviews since its premiere, with
current IMDb rating at 2.8/10. It is often criticized for the high degree of
emphasis on the "famous for being famous" concept, and for appearing to
fabricate some aspects of its storylines.
 Fill for W,X,Y,Z. (5 points each)
1) Kthanxbye

Kardashians, Caitlyn Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Keeping Up With The
Kardashians

 The title sequence
of a famous movie
(W), based on the
work of X and
directed by Y. This
scene is a reference
to (what would have
been) another iconic
and defining moment
in comic history (Z).
Put Funda.
 (5 points each)
2) Superheroes
Video removed

Watchmen, Alan Moore, Zach Snyder, Bruce Wayne’s parents
getting saved.

 Reach out to me at +91-7275739224
 mohandas.mahendra@gmail.com
So long and thanks for all the fish.

Buffer Question

 In his new avatar as an action hero, X has been featured on the cover of Civil
War II: Choosing Sides, along with Puck, Sasquatch and Aurora – members of
Superhero team Alpha Flight. Cartoonist Ramon Perez, who is behind X’s
depiction, told that his original draft did feature a bare-chested X, but Marvel
thought that the move might be too risky.
 Who?
1) The new superhero in town, or in the country

Justin Trudeau

MELA Quiz Finals IIT BHU Kashiyatra 2018

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