Diehard Bollywood fan takes Antakshari crown

19-year-old Rajshri Roy loves her Bollywood music. A walking encyclopedia on the Hindi music scene, she can regale you for hours with facts about songs, singers, music directors, films, lyricists, lyrics, old songs, new songs, remixes … And of course, she can sing non-stop. If you ever find yourself in an Antakshari situation, she’d be the one you would want on your team. Definitely.

It’s no wonder then that she and her partner Mimansa Rana took the first prize, for the second year in a row, at the Grand Antakshari that was staged late August.

Watching her on stage, is akin to watching a modern-day Meera completely magan in her devotion to the one love of her life. Such is her passion, that she sings completely oblivious to anyone who may be watching. In fact one of the judges on stage mentioned in passing that if she did indeed have such a passion for the art, perhaps she should go take some singing lessons. The comment probably went straight over Rajshri’s head, whose attitude continued to be a nonchalant ‘I feel like singing, and sing I will, whether you like it or not’.

And with that exactly attitude, the young woman had won over the audience. It is her performance that will stick on foremost in memory, from this particular event.

Giving a chance for the likes of Rajshri to sing on stage, has been the idea behind the annual Grand Antakshari. Organised by Avijit Sarkar of Natraj Academy of fine arts and Kedar of Chandana TV, the event attracted lovers of Hindi music to a night of fun and games.

The contest tasks went way beyond the traditional antakshari, of course, in which contestants pick up where the previous team left off and keep the sequence going. Following in the path carved out by Indian TV’s successful format, many inventive quiz-like questions were incorporated. These included identifying the films from which stimulus songs were picked, their actors, or listing other songs from the same film. Or again, ‘Who am I’ sequences involving different personalities from the Hindi music industry.

These went down rather well.

Avijit Sarkar, a musician of many years’ experience and well-known in the community, acted as host on the night. He took competing teams of two through quarter final, semi final and final rounds.

The judges, Rachana Bhatnagar and Vinod Rajput, well-known singers in their own right, performed their duties quite diligently - checking lyrics and commenting on the singing styles, even singing along on more than one occasion. Even scorer Pradeep Pandya found opportunity to throw in a witty remark or two, adding to the entertainment in his own way.

The contestants, some of who had never sung in front of an audience before, differed in capability but were all matched in terms of their passion for popular Hindi music. Admittedly, earlier rounds took off slowly, but as the contest drew closer to its end, the answers came rapid fire, even as the quizmaster barely finished his question. And as the tension escalated at times, the audience held its collective breath, such as when Rajshri struggled to come up with the correct lyrics for Chak De India, a rather complicated number – heaving a sigh of relief as she managed to finally get them right.

These moments of sheer entertainment notwithstanding, there were a few technicalities that could have been better handled. Purely by way of suggestion, the video grabs could have been neater; a score board on stage would have helped; a female presence (suitably vivacious?) could have shouldered half the MCing responsibilities with Avijit. A microphone circulating in the audience would have been much appreciated too, as many had got into the swing of things and, knowing the answers, wanted to sing themselves!

And in the end, that was exactly the essence of it all.

Rajni Anand Luthra