QM: Annie Sengupta
In the end, the era is irrelevant. Socrates the philosopher
and Socrates the footballer may have carried the same ideals, the same
ambiguities.They could almost have been the same person, separated by 2,000
years. The ancient cultures believed in superstitions and had blind faith, just
like we do. They tried to control land, power, chattel, fates just as we do. Some
were wrong and some were wise enough to right their wrongs. They painted over
facts and exaggerated their stories, just like we tried to clothe the Harappan dancing
girl. They exploited their privileges and they stamped their names into stones and mud and left
behind their dead emissaries to speak with us.
We learnt of the remarkable priestess Enheduanna, but who
remembers the wandering ascetic who perhaps also recited hymns to her Sumerian
gods? Who remembers the descendants of the horsemen and water carriers and
cooks who marched alongside the Timurids? Does remembering it all make any difference,
since we repeat the same stories across cultures, across timespans and geographies? And so, what is the point of posterity if we refuse to learn? We do not even need asteroids
anymore to cause mass extinctions. We
still allow the worship of beings that accept innocent child sacrifices. In the
end the centuries of enlightenment and revolutions do not automatically produce
a wiser civilisation, for we possess the same hubris as our ancestors did.
And yet there is hope , peeking through the murkiness of the
past in strange places. One such hope is Piyush Pandey's song of unity in
diversity, which Annie played in full as the answer to the last question. If
only we could pay heed.
Teams and Scores
1st : Team 3: 197 points
Prabhav Sidhaye, Mervyn Fernandes, Melchior Teles, Aastha
Dua, Daksh Chauhan, Nitish Wagle
2nd: Teams 1 and 2: 155 points
Team 1: Simran Dhond, Raunak Nevgi, Ruchira Porob.
Paul Gatward, Tanmay Naik Pereira, Assis Sequeira
Team 2: Kanchan Gatward, Kaivalya Karkare, R Samyak,
Devika Shetty, Viola Rodrigues, Isha
4th: Team 5: 140 points
Ajit, Anjali Sengupta, Adish Talwadkar, Doc Chandrashekhar
Rao, Nishant Kedar, Vilas Pavithran
5th:Team 6: 138 points
Srijit Kumar, Sunil Sardessai, Saud Sayed, Neha Kamat, Anirudh
Kakodkar
6th: Team 4: 125 points
Utsav Banerjee, Soham Gaunekar, Ajay Poonia, Rochelle
Martins, Pankaj Patil,
Namit Kumar
