On 21^st October, 2009, a fine Wednesday morning, four of us left the hallowed environment of our school in pursuit of yet another laurel for Don Bosco, Liluah. This was the quiz team of DBL, looking to conquer Jaco IZ, 2009. The preliminary round was to be held that day in the St. James School Hall. It was in the form of a written test of thirty-five questions, which would decide the best eight teams of the thirty-two participating schools. We were not too happy with our performance and we left the St. James campus that day, in an anxious mood. It would be a 35-hour long wait before we got to know our fate…

 

Two days later, on the 23^rd, we left the school enveloped with a peculiar feeling of nervousness mingled with excitement. We reached G.D. Birla Sabhaghar, the venue of the finals. As the answers of the prelims were announced, our hearts lurched. The wrong answers were more in number than the right ones. This was followed by the announcement of the names of the top eight teams. Our name did not feature anywhere in the beginning. The names were announced in the order of our scores in the prelims, such that the winner’s name would be announced last. Six names had been announced. We were losing hope and had almost got up to leave the hall, when we actually had to get up, but for a better reason. We HAD been selected. We had actually come in second in the prelims.

 

This was followed by two hours and nine rounds of nail-biting quizzing conducted by St. James’s quiz trainer Mr. Biswaroop Dasgupta. DBL slipped into an early lead thanks to some with some great answers. This lead continued till the end of the eighth round. The beginning of the last round saw DBL on 75 points followed by National Gems High School on 70 and South Point High School on 60. The lead changed hands two times in the last round. Before the last question, we were leading by five points. When that question was asked, we were delighted to see that the NGHS team was not sure with their answer. They gave their answer in a ‘not-so-confident’ tone. But our new-found joy was lost in nothingness when the quizmaster said that they were correct. The day had passed by, the quiz was over, and we had the runners-up trophy in our hand. Yet, our co-contestants congratulated us and said that we must have no regrets. We were handed the trophy by the Mr. Debesh Sarkar, Hon’ble Minister of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal. Jaco IZ, 2009 had indeed been a great experience for us.