Some of the sharpest brains in the country are sweating it out, chewing up their fingernails, making repeated journeys to the loo. Quizmaster Siddhartha Basu is giving more retakes than usual. The atmosphere is tense, the audience tired, and it's late into the night. At the City Palace in Jaipur, the final round to decide the winner of Mastermind '99 is bringing little joy to everyone concerned with the event.
Part of the audience for the show didn't make it, the technicians are easily irritated, and even the quizmaster's affable face is showing signs of strain. "Anyone would be nervous," he laughs it off. He may have good reason to be for along with the four contestants, there are Sawai Bhawani Singh of the house of the Kachchawahas and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan to keep him company on the sets. "Silence on the floor," calls a voice from the darkness. "Lights. Action." The cameras begin to roll, and with it Basu's trademark smile is back on his face. The focus is the black chair on which the Mastermind aspirants sit _ once on it, the contestants lose their nervousness, transformed, as it were, into geniuses.
For 25 years, heritage sites and a knowledge contest have been the high points of the Mastermind series in the UK. In India too, it's followed the same format in its second year, with the final round to be screened on BBC World on December 27.
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Last year, Welham Girls vice-principal Dayita Bira Datta from Dehra Dun had walked off with the honours in a show that combines "learning with ancient memorials or sites". This year too, the finalists in Jaipur include a teacher from Dehra Dun _ Ajai Banerji, who has a B Tech from IIT, Kanpur and an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad _ along with Girish Shahane, editor of The Art News magazine in Mumbai, Santanu Chakrabarti, a graduate from Calcutta, and Jaidev Raja, a corporate communications manager from Bangalore.
The contest isn't an easy one at all. "We advertised in a national daily for a preliminary test," says Basu in between takes, "and the response was a phenomenal 950 entries from 16 centres around the country, all for a single trophy."
Whittled down to the 64 top-scoring contestants who went on to appear in the television rounds, the action hotted up as the volley of questions began on their choice of three subjects _ two Indian and one universal. Edging their way past the others, the four zonal finalists made it to the City Palace with its silver urns, glittering chandeliers and medieval walls on a moonlit night for a keenly contested battle of wits to see who would make it