MELA Quiz

Prelims
Dyal Singh College | Researched and Conducted by Akash Verma | 01/04/2019
Rules
• 24 Questions in the Prelims worth 30 points.
• 19-24 are two-pointers.
• Star-marked questions to resolve ties.
• QM’s decision is final.

2
1. The Best Baker in the World is a children’s book by the film critic Raja Sen. This
wild and whimsical story is a retelling of a classic Hollywood film. The characters have
been replaced with animals and they speak in limericks. The protagonist is a big grey owl
with a purple beak, who makes such delectable pastries that one simply cannot turn them
down.

Which movie is the book based on?

2. Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian-American adult animated sci-fi-fantasy film directed
by Gerald Potterton, produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the
publisher of Heavy Metal magazine. The film is an anthology of various science fiction and
fantasy stories adapted from Heavy Metal magazine and original stories in the same spirit.
Like the magazine, the film features a great deal of graphic violence, sexuality, and nudity.

How has the film come into limelight in 2019?

3*. As his moniker implies, this graffiti artist is best recognized for making humorous,
pun-themed work related to popular culture icons and putting those images on the street; for
instance, in the work that inspired his artist name, he combined the body of X’s classic rat
with a cartoon face of Y.
Look at the two images and tell me what name is he known by?
4. Since the release of the movie in question kept getting delayed, the director also
made a short film that acted as the prologue to the movie. Titled Kali Katha, it opens with a
couple trapped in a trouble marriage. The husband, blinded by his ambition to become a
superstar, has turned tone deaf to his wife's needs. Egged by a Baba, he wants a child in a
hope of reversal of fortunes. His wife is unwilling. Brainwashed by a friend, he returns
home drunk to show his wife who is the boss. And the child is conceived. Not a pleasant
sight.

Which movie did it serve as a prologue to?

5. _____ Gawaiya _____ Bajaiya is an Indian animated film directed by Shilpa Ranade.
According to Wikipedia, the movie follows “two blundering yet lovable musician protagonists meet
ghosts, obtain boons, avert wars, marry princesses and help the common people live happily ever
after”.

Which two characters is the film based on?

6*. When writing about the irony of being appointed director of the National Library of
_________, in 1955, at the very end of his eyesight, and therefore basically unable to read,
though he was still writing, this writer says “There I was, the center, in a way, of nine
hundred thousand books in various languages, but I found I could barely make out the title
pages and the spines.”

It was 20 years after this appointment, and after his final descent into near-blindness, that
he drew this self-portrait using one finger to guide the pen he was holding with his other
hand.

Name the writer.

7. Look at the images that follow. These are some of the finalists of a 1956 competition
that attracted over 222 entries, and was finally won by a Dane.

What are these the rejected proposals for?

8. Over the past five decades, this writer has published nearly 300 books, many of which
have been blockbusters. One of his books reportedly even inspired the notorious Tandoor
murder case in New Delhi in 1995, in which a man tried to dispose of his victim’s body in a
furnace. He was also the first writer to use the word ‘company’ for Mumbai underworld gangs.
Such is the popularity of this writer that his book Colaba Conspiracy was voted the most
popular book in a 2014 Amazon survey.
On the next slide is the cover of the first of what will be a three-part autobiography.

Identify him.
9. Louis Vuitton’s 2012 collaboration with which artist?
10. Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominica-born British author Jean Rhys.
It is a feminist and anti-colonial response to a mid-19th century novel X describing the
background to a marriage in the novel from the point-of-view of his mad wife Antoinette
Cosway, a Creole heiress. Antoinette Cosway is Rhys' version of Y's devilish "madwoman
in the attic". Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy
marriage to a certain unnamed English gentleman, who renames her Bertha, declares her
mad, and takes her to England. She is largely confined to "the attic" of the mansion she
calls the "Great House".
Rhys uses multiple voices to tell the story, and intertwines her novel's plot with that of X.

Which novel is this a response to?

11. Deriving its name from Kannada and Tamil for bear, this story teller tells stories
that he has experienced in his lifetime. The popular stories are from Indian Classics such
as the Panchatantra and the Jataka and also from the grand epics of India, the Ramayana
and the Mahabharat. Although the stories have strong Indian roots, they speak of morals
and ideals that are universal.
Initially played by Naseeruddin Shah, this character has also been voiced by the likes of
Girish Karnad and Nandita Das.

Name this ursine raconteur from the eponymous series of audio books.
12*. Given on the next slide is a poem by Monica Youn. Which painting is the
subject of the poem?
It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing ___
_____.
That we know for certain, and what was left
behind–
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an
overture.
And the rest? We don’t know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the
paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-
edged pattern;
the figure’s fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening;
houses clapping a thousand shingle hands to
shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum
walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a
baited hook,
a postcard: “Thanks for the poor security.”
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand
whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all
mean?”
Someone has the answers, someone who,
grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar
boiling sky.
13. The director reportedly used four cameras to capture this scene, and multiple takes
were just out of the question. The scene required over 200 squibs in the character’s 1941
Lincoln and the stall and between 110 and 149 (depending on whose story you believe) in
actor’s suit. His agony wasn’t just good acting — each squib is, in fact, a tiny explosion, and
the experience wasn’t exactly pain-free for the actor. The car and the stall exploded on cue.
The scene required three days, and the technicians and explosives cost $100,000, a
significant amount for a film with a budget of about $6.5 million.

Which iconic scene?

14. Manu S Pillai’s non-fiction book The Ivory Throne looks at the life and times of
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last queen of the __________ royal family. Apart from a famous
painter and his wife, the book’s characters include English agents, wife-swapping court
favourites and lecherous kings. The House of __________ , founded in 1729, lasted till
1949.

FITB.
15. There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is
that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife at random into a dictionary,
where it landed on ____ a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Others note that it
suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to
the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar
meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's
internationalism.
Marked by a rejection of reason and logic of bourgeois capitalists that had led Europe into
the World War, this movement embraced chaos and irrationality.

Often hailed as the beginning of postmodern art, which movement is this?

16*. This is a painting by M.F. Hussain dated 2 Jan 1989. Called Tribute to ______,
this symbol of resistance against authoritarianism showcases a tragic event in the history of
Indian culture. That year, it sold at an auction for over $1 million, the first time a painting by
an Indian artist reached this valuation.

Who/ what is the subject of the painting?

17. This is the poster of a 2016 Iranian film which won
the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It is about a
married couple who perform they play X on stage, when the
wife is assaulted. Her husband attempts to determine the
identity of the attacker, while she struggles to cope with
post-trauma stress.

Looking for a play within the film, the director Asghar

Farhadi researched the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and
Henrik Ibsen before finally settling on this. Farhadi said he
found parallel themes of "humiliation", and also compared
the relationship between his characters Rana and Emad to
that of Linda and her husband.

Which play?
18. Around The World is a Bollywood romantic comedy released in 1967 directed by
Pachhi. This rom-com was extensively shot all around the world, as the title suggests. It
featured Raj Kapoor as an Indian who travels around the world on 8 dollars. The film also
starred Rajshree, Ameeta, Om Prakash, and Mehmood.

What first did the movie achieve, which is frequently, and incorrectly attributed to a
movie that came out 8 years later, despite the makers making no such claims?
19. Amongst his many works, he has designed the campus of IIM-Bangalore. Apart
from the courtyards of the temples of Madurai, the design of a 16 th-century historical city
known for its compact and continuous patterns of gardens also served as an inspiration
for the college’s design.

Which city?

Who is the architect, and what first did he achieve last year?
20*. X has been reimagined as a superhero by Devil’s Due Comics. Titled X and the
Freshman Force, the comic cover shows X standing in a defiant pose, dressed in a Wonder
Woman–esque armor with a sword in hand.

Identify X.

She has previously revealed herself to be a comics fan, taking time out in January to quote an
iconic work in a tweet to her detractors: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with
YOU. You’re locked up in here with ME.”
The title of the work in question gets its name from a question famously asked by the Roman
satirist Juvenal, which referred to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions
of power.

Identify the reference.

21. When it was published in 1991, the book received great critical acclaim and
numerous accolades including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was also shortlisted
for the Booker Prize. The novel follows the life of a hard-working Parsi bank clerk, and also
traces through him, India's political turmoil under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.

In 2010 the book made headlines when it was withdrawn from the University of Mumbai's
English syllabus after complaints from the family of the Shiv Sena for containing
discriminatory and derogatory remarks about Maharashtrians and abusive languages about
Bal Thackeray.

Which book?

Name the writer.

22. X is an Academy Award winning filmmaker whose films are known for dealing with
supernatural and macabre themes. But while his films are highly acclaimed for their intricate
craftsmanship and meticulously detailed production, his ventures into the world of video games
has been rather unsuccessful, with every game that he has tried to develop, getting cancelled
by the studio funding the particular project, a spell that will hopefully be broken given his
involvement as a motion capture actor in a highly anticipated upcoming PS4 exclusive title.

The most infamous of these cancelled ventures is his 2014 first person survival horror game
that he was developing in collaboration with video game mastermind Y, who is known for his
graphic adventures games regarded for their cinematic presentation. The project in question
was cancelled by Konami later that year, a move that brought widespread condemnation from
the gaming community. The upcoming project is the first game from director Y and his reformed
development studio after their disbandment from Konami in 2015.

Identify X and Y.
23. Identify the
works of literature from
these covers.
24. X is a 2012 documentary written and directed by Nishtha Jain. is a vigilante group. It
tells the story of a vigilante group, which first appeared in Uttar Pradesh, as a response to
widespread domestic abuse and other violence against women. The film won 2 National
Awards.

Sharing its name with the group, what was the documentary named?

In 2014, a movie Y released which was supposedly based on the life of the leader of the
vigilante group. The makers were sued by the group and a stay order passed but it was lifted
within a day and did not affect the film’s release.

Directed by Soumik Sen, which movie is this, whose name differs from the
documentary only by one letter?
RERUN
1. The Best Baker in the World is a children’s book by the film critic Raja Sen. This
wild and whimsical story is a retelling of a classic Hollywood film. The characters have
been replaced with animals and they speak in limericks. The protagonist is a big grey owl
with a purple beak, who makes such delectable pastries that one simply cannot turn them
down.

Which movie is the book based on?

2. Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian-American adult animated sci-fi-fantasy film directed
by Gerald Potterton, produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the
publisher of Heavy Metal magazine. The film is an anthology of various science fiction and
fantasy stories adapted from Heavy Metal magazine and original stories in the same spirit.
Like the magazine, the film features a great deal of graphic violence, sexuality, and nudity.

How has the film come into limelight in 2019?

3*. As his moniker implies, this graffiti artist is best recognized for making humorous,
pun-themed work related to popular culture icons and putting those images on the street; for
instance, in the work that inspired his artist name, he combined the body of X’s classic rat
with a cartoon face of Y.
Look at the two images and tell me what name is he known by?
4. Since the release of the movie in question kept getting delayed, the director also
made a short film that acted as the prologue to the movie. Titled Kali Katha, it opens with a
couple trapped in a trouble marriage. The husband, blinded by his ambition to become a
superstar, has turned tone deaf to his wife's needs. Egged by a Baba, he wants a child in a
hope of reversal of fortunes. His wife is unwilling. Brainwashed by a friend, he returns
home drunk to show his wife who is the boss. And the child is conceived. Not a pleasant
sight.

Which movie did it serve as a prologue to?

5. _____ Gawaiya _____ Bajaiya is an Indian animated film directed by Shilpa Ranade.
According to Wikipedia, the movie follows “two blundering yet lovable musician protagonists meet
ghosts, obtain boons, avert wars, marry princesses and help the common people live happily ever
after”.

Which two characters is the film based on?

6*. When writing about the irony of being appointed director of the National Library of
_________, in 1955, at the very end of his eyesight, and therefore basically unable to read,
though he was still writing, this writer says “There I was, the center, in a way, of nine
hundred thousand books in various languages, but I found I could barely make out the title
pages and the spines.”

It was 20 years after this appointment, and after his final descent into near-blindness, that
he drew this self-portrait using one finger to guide the pen he was holding with his other
hand.

Name the writer.

7. Look at the images that follow. These are some of the finalists of a 1956 competition
that attracted over 222 entries, and was finally won by a Dane.

What are these the rejected proposals for?

8. Over the past five decades, this writer has published nearly 300 books, many of which
have been blockbusters. One of his books reportedly even inspired the notorious Tandoor
murder case in New Delhi in 1995, in which a man tried to dispose of his victim’s body in a
furnace. He was also the first writer to use the word ‘company’ for Mumbai underworld gangs.
Such is the popularity of this writer that his book Colaba Conspiracy was voted the most
popular book in a 2014 Amazon survey.
On the next slide is the cover of the first of what will be a three-part autobiography.

Identify him.
9. Louis Vuitton’s 2012 collaboration with which artist?
10. Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominica-born British author Jean Rhys.
It is a feminist and anti-colonial response to a mid-19th century novel X describing the
background to a marriage in the novel from the point-of-view of his mad wife Antoinette
Cosway, a Creole heiress. Antoinette Cosway is Rhys' version of Y's devilish "madwoman
in the attic". Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy
marriage to a certain unnamed English gentleman, who renames her Bertha, declares her
mad, and takes her to England. She is largely confined to "the attic" of the mansion she
calls the "Great House".
Rhys uses multiple voices to tell the story, and intertwines her novel's plot with that of X.

Which novel is this a response to?

11. Deriving its name from Kannada and Tamil for bear, this story teller tells stories
that he has experienced in his lifetime. The popular stories are from Indian Classics such
as the Panchatantra and the Jataka and also from the grand epics of India, the Ramayana
and the Mahabharat. Although the stories have strong Indian roots, they speak of morals
and ideals that are universal.
Initially played by Naseeruddin Shah, this character has also been voiced by the likes of
Girish Karnad and Nandita Das.

Name this ursine raconteur from the eponymous series of audio books.
12*. Given on the next slide is a poem by Monica Youn. Which painting is the
subject of the poem?
It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing ___
_____.
That we know for certain, and what was left
behind–
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an
overture.
And the rest? We don’t know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the
paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-
edged pattern;
the figure’s fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening;
houses clapping a thousand shingle hands to
shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum
walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a
baited hook,
a postcard: “Thanks for the poor security.”
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand
whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all
mean?”
Someone has the answers, someone who,
grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar
boiling sky.
13. The director reportedly used four cameras to capture this scene, and multiple takes
were just out of the question. The scene required over 200 squibs in the character’s 1941
Lincoln and the stall and between 110 and 149 (depending on whose story you believe) in
actor’s suit. His agony wasn’t just good acting — each squib is, in fact, a tiny explosion, and
the experience wasn’t exactly pain-free for the actor. The car and the stall exploded on cue.
The scene required three days, and the technicians and explosives cost $100,000, a
significant amount for a film with a budget of about $6.5 million.

Which iconic scene?

14. Manu S Pillai’s non-fiction book The Ivory Throne looks at the life and times of
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last queen of the __________ royal family. Apart from a famous
painter and his wife, the book’s characters include English agents, wife-swapping court
favourites and lecherous kings. The House of __________ , founded in 1729, lasted till
1949.

FITB.
15. There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is
that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife at random into a dictionary,
where it landed on ____ a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Others note that it
suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to
the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar
meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's
internationalism.
Marked by a rejection of reason and logic of bourgeois capitalists that had led Europe into
the World War, this movement embraced chaos and irrationality.

Often hailed as the beginning of postmodern art, which movement is this?

16*. This is a painting by M.F. Hussain dated 2 Jan 1989. Called Tribute to ______,
this symbol of resistance against authoritarianism showcases a tragic event in the history of
Indian culture. That year, it sold at an auction for over $1 million, the first time a painting by
an Indian artist reached this valuation.

Who/ what is the subject of the painting?

17. This is the poster of a 2016 Iranian film which won
the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It is about a
married couple who perform they play X on stage, when the
wife is assaulted. Her husband attempts to determine the
identity of the attacker, while she struggles to cope with
post-trauma stress.

Looking for a play within the film, the director Asghar

Farhadi researched the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and
Henrik Ibsen before finally settling on this. Farhadi said he
found parallel themes of "humiliation", and also compared
the relationship between his characters Rana and Emad to
that of Linda and her husband.

Which play?
18. Around The World is a Bollywood romantic comedy released in 1967 directed by
Pachhi. This rom-com was extensively shot all around the world, as the title suggests. It
featured Raj Kapoor as an Indian who travels around the world on 8 dollars. The film also
starred Rajshree, Ameeta, Om Prakash, and Mehmood.

What first did the movie achieve, which is frequently, and incorrectly attributed to a
movie that came out 8 years later, despite the makers making no such claims?
19. Amongst his many works, he has designed the campus of IIM-Bangalore. Apart
from the courtyards of the temples of Madurai, the design of a 16 th-century historical city
known for its compact and continuous patterns of gardens also served as an inspiration
for the college’s design.

Which city?

Who is the architect, and what first did he achieve last year?
20*. X has been reimagined as a superhero by Devil’s Due Comics. Titled X and the
Freshman Force, the comic cover shows X standing in a defiant pose, dressed in a Wonder
Woman–esque armor with a sword in hand.

Identify X.

She has previously revealed herself to be a comics fan, taking time out in January to quote an
iconic work in a tweet to her detractors: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with
YOU. You’re locked up in here with ME.”
The title of the work in question gets its name from a question famously asked by the Roman
satirist Juvenal, which referred to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions
of power.

Identify the reference.

21. When it was published in 1991, the book received great critical acclaim and
numerous accolades including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was also shortlisted
for the Booker Prize. The novel follows the life of a hard-working Parsi bank clerk, and also
traces through him, India's political turmoil under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.

In 2010 the book made headlines when it was withdrawn from the University of Mumbai's
English syllabus after complaints from the family of the Shiv Sena for containing
discriminatory and derogatory remarks about Maharashtrians and abusive languages about
Bal Thackeray.

Which book?

Name the writer.

22. X is an Academy Award winning filmmaker whose films are known for dealing with
supernatural and macabre themes. But while his films are highly acclaimed for their intricate
craftsmanship and meticulously detailed production, his ventures into the world of video games
has been rather unsuccessful, with every game that he has tried to develop, getting cancelled
by the studio funding the particular project, a spell that will hopefully be broken given his
involvement as a motion capture actor in a highly anticipated upcoming PS4 exclusive title.

The most infamous of these cancelled ventures is his 2014 first person survival horror game
that he was developing in collaboration with video game mastermind Y, who is known for his
graphic adventures games regarded for their cinematic presentation. The project in question
was cancelled by Konami later that year, a move that brought widespread condemnation from
the gaming community. The upcoming project is the first game from director Y and his reformed
development studio after their disbandment from Konami in 2015.

Identify X and Y.
23. Identify the
works of literature from
these covers.
24. X is a 2012 documentary written and directed by Nishtha Jain. is a vigilante group. It
tells the story of a vigilante group, which first appeared in Uttar Pradesh, as a response to
widespread domestic abuse and other violence against women. The film won 2 National
Awards.

Sharing its name with the group, what was the documentary named?

In 2014, a movie Y released which was supposedly based on the life of the leader of the
vigilante group. The makers were sued by the group and a stay order passed but it was lifted
within a day and did not affect the film’s release.

Directed by Soumik Sen, which movie is this, whose name differs from the
documentary only by one letter?
ANSWERS

68
1. The Best Baker in the World is a children’s book by the film critic Raja Sen. This
wild and whimsical story is a retelling of a classic Hollywood film. The characters have
been replaced with animals and they speak in limericks. The protagonist is a big grey owl
with a purple beak, who makes such delectable pastries that one simply cannot turn them
down.

Which movie is the book based on?

• The Godfather
2. Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian-American adult animated sci-fi-fantasy film directed
by Gerald Potterton, produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the
publisher of Heavy Metal magazine. The film is an anthology of various science fiction and
fantasy stories adapted from Heavy Metal magazine and original stories in the same spirit.
Like the magazine, the film features a great deal of graphic violence, sexuality, and nudity.

How has the film come into limelight in 2019?

• Love, Death and Robots
3*. As his moniker implies, this graffiti artist is best recognized for making humorous,
pun-themed work related to popular culture icons and putting those images on the street; for
instance, in the work that inspired his artist name, he combined the body of X’s classic rat
with a cartoon face of Y.
Look at the two images and tell me what name is he known by?
• Hanksy
4. Since the release of the movie in question kept getting delayed, the director also
made a short film that acted as the prologue to the movie. Titled Kali Katha, it opens with a
couple trapped in a trouble marriage. The husband, blinded by his ambition to become a
superstar, has turned tone deaf to his wife's needs. Egged by a Baba, he wants a child in a
hope of reversal of fortunes. His wife is unwilling. Brainwashed by a friend, he returns
home drunk to show his wife who is the boss. And the child is conceived. Not a pleasant
sight.

Which movie did it serve as a prologue to?

• Ugly
5. _____ Gawaiya _____ Bajaiya is an Indian animated film directed by Shilpa Ranade.
According to Wikipedia, the movie follows “two blundering yet lovable musician protagonists meet
ghosts, obtain boons, avert wars, marry princesses and help the common people live happily ever
after”.

Which two characters is the film based on?

• Goopi-Bagha
6*. When writing about the irony of being appointed director of the National Library of
_________, in 1955, at the very end of his eyesight, and therefore basically unable to read,
though he was still writing, this writer says “There I was, the center, in a way, of nine
hundred thousand books in various languages, but I found I could barely make out the title
pages and the spines.”

It was 20 years after this appointment, and after his final descent into near-blindness, that
he drew this self-portrait using one finger to guide the pen he was holding with his other
hand.

Name the writer.

• Jorge Luis Borges
7. Look at the images that follow. These are some of the finalists of a 1956 competition
that attracted over 222 entries, and was finally won by a Dane.

What are these the rejected proposals for?

• Sydney Opera House
8. Over the past five decades, this writer has published nearly 300 books, many of which
have been blockbusters. One of his books reportedly even inspired the notorious Tandoor
murder case in New Delhi in 1995, in which a man tried to dispose of his victim’s body in a
furnace. He was also the first writer to use the word ‘company’ for Mumbai underworld gangs.
Such is the popularity of this writer that his book Colaba Conspiracy was voted the most
popular book in a 2014 Amazon survey.
On the next slide is the cover of the first of what will be a three-part autobiography.

Identify him.
• Surendra Mohan Pathak
9. Louis Vuitton’s 2012 collaboration with which artist?
• Yayoi Kusama
10. Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominica-born British author Jean Rhys.
It is a feminist and anti-colonial response to a mid-19th century novel X describing the
background to a marriage in the novel from the point-of-view of his mad wife Antoinette
Cosway, a Creole heiress. Antoinette Cosway is Rhys' version of Y's devilish "madwoman
in the attic". Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy
marriage to a certain unnamed English gentleman, who renames her Bertha, declares her
mad, and takes her to England. She is largely confined to "the attic" of the mansion she
calls the "Great House".
Rhys uses multiple voices to tell the story, and intertwines her novel's plot with that of X.

Which novel is this a response to?

• Jane Eyre
11. Deriving its name from Kannada and Tamil for bear, this story teller tells stories
that he has experienced in his lifetime. The popular stories are from Indian Classics such
as the Panchatantra and the Jataka and also from the grand epics of India, the Ramayana
and the Mahabharat. Although the stories have strong Indian roots, they speak of morals
and ideals that are universal.
Initially played by Naseeruddin Shah, this character has also been voiced by the likes of
Girish Karnad and Nandita Das.

Name this ursine raconteur from the eponymous series of audio books.
• Karadi Tales
12*. Given on the next slide is a poem by Monica Youn. Which painting is the
subject of the poem?
It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing ___
_____.
That we know for certain, and what was left
behind–
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an
overture.
And the rest? We don’t know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the
paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-
edged pattern;
the figure’s fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening;
houses clapping a thousand shingle hands to
shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;
the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum
walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a
baited hook,
a postcard: “Thanks for the poor security.”
The policemen, lost as tourists, stand
whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all
mean?”
Someone has the answers, someone who,
grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar
boiling sky.
• The Scream
13. The director reportedly used four cameras to capture this scene, and multiple takes
were just out of the question. The scene required over 200 squibs in the character’s 1941
Lincoln and the stall and between 110 and 149 (depending on whose story you believe) in
actor’s suit. His agony wasn’t just good acting — each squib is, in fact, a tiny explosion, and
the experience wasn’t exactly pain-free for the actor. The car and the stall exploded on cue.
The scene required three days, and the technicians and explosives cost $100,000, a
significant amount for a film with a budget of about $6.5 million.

Which iconic scene?

• Sonny Corleone’s death
14. Manu S Pillai’s non-fiction book The Ivory Throne looks at the life and times of
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last queen of the __________ royal family. Apart from a famous
painter and his wife, the book’s characters include English agents, wife-swapping court
favourites and lecherous kings. The House of __________ , founded in 1729, lasted till
1949.

FITB.
• Travancore
15. There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is
that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife at random into a dictionary,
where it landed on ____ a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Others note that it
suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to
the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar
meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's
internationalism.
Marked by a rejection of reason and logic of bourgeois capitalists that had led Europe into
the World War, this movement embraced chaos and irrationality.

Often hailed as the beginning of postmodern art, which movement is this?

• Dadaism
16*. This is a painting by M.F. Hussain dated 2 Jan 1989. Called Tribute to ______,
this symbol of resistance against authoritarianism showcases a tragic event in the history of
Indian culture. That year, it sold at an auction for over $1 million, the first time a painting by
an Indian artist reached this valuation.

Who/ what is the subject of the painting?

• Safdar Hashmi
17. This is the poster of a 2016 Iranian film which won
the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It is about a
married couple who perform they play X on stage, when the
wife is assaulted. Her husband attempts to determine the
identity of the attacker, while she struggles to cope with
post-trauma stress.

Looking for a play within the film, the director Asghar

Farhadi researched the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and
Henrik Ibsen before finally settling on this. Farhadi said he
found parallel themes of "humiliation", and also compared
the relationship between his characters Rana and Emad to
that of Linda and her husband.

Which play?
• Death Of A Salesman
18. Around The World is a Bollywood romantic comedy released in 1967 directed by
Pachhi. This rom-com was extensively shot all around the world, as the title suggests. It
featured Raj Kapoor as an Indian who travels around the world on 8 dollars. The film also
starred Rajshree, Ameeta, Om Prakash, and Mehmood.

What first did the movie achieve, which is frequently, and incorrectly attributed to a
movie that came out 8 years later, despite the makers making no such claims?
• First film to be released in 70mm
19. Amongst his many works, he has designed the campus of IIM-Bangalore. Apart
from the courtyards of the temples of Madurai, the design of a 16 th-century historical city
known for its compact and continuous patterns of gardens also served as an inspiration
for the college’s design.

Which city?

Who is the architect, and what first did he achieve last year?
• Fatehpur Sikri
• BV Doshi; First Indian
architect to win the Pritzker
Prize
20*. X has been reimagined as a superhero by Devil’s Due Comics. Titled X and the
Freshman Force, the comic cover shows X standing in a defiant pose, dressed in a Wonder
Woman–esque armor with a sword in hand.

Identify X.

She has previously revealed herself to be a comics fan, taking time out in January to quote an
iconic work in a tweet to her detractors: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with
YOU. You’re locked up in here with ME.”
The title of the work in question gets its name from a question famously asked by the Roman
satirist Juvenal, which referred to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions
of power.

Identify the reference.

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Watchmen
21. When it was published in 1991, the book received great critical acclaim and
numerous accolades including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was also shortlisted
for the Booker Prize. The novel follows the life of a hard-working Parsi bank clerk, and also
traces through him, India's political turmoil under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.

In 2010 the book made headlines when it was withdrawn from the University of Mumbai's
English syllabus after complaints from the family of the Shiv Sena for containing
discriminatory and derogatory remarks about Maharashtrians and abusive languages about
Bal Thackeray.

Which book?

Name the writer.

• Such A Long Journey
• Rohinton Mistry
22. X is an Academy Award winning filmmaker whose films are known for dealing with
supernatural and macabre themes. But while his films are highly acclaimed for their intricate
craftsmanship and meticulously detailed production, his ventures into the world of video games
has been rather unsuccessful, with every game that he has tried to develop, getting cancelled
by the studio funding the particular project, a spell that will hopefully be broken given his
involvement as a motion capture actor in a highly anticipated upcoming PS4 exclusive title.

The most infamous of these cancelled ventures is his 2014 first person survival horror game
that he was developing in collaboration with video game mastermind Y, who is known for his
graphic adventures games regarded for their cinematic presentation. The project in question
was cancelled by Konami later that year, a move that brought widespread condemnation from
the gaming community. The upcoming project is the first game from director Y and his reformed
development studio after their disbandment from Konami in 2015.

Identify X and Y.
• Guillermo Del Toro
• Hideo Kojima
23. Identify the
works of literature from
these covers.
• Shakuntala
• Ananda Math
24. X is a 2012 documentary written and directed by Nishtha Jain. is a vigilante group. It
tells the story of a vigilante group, which first appeared in Uttar Pradesh, as a response to
widespread domestic abuse and other violence against women. The film won 2 National
Awards.

Sharing its name with the group, what was the documentary named?

In 2014, a movie Y released which was supposedly based on the life of the leader of the
vigilante group. The makers were sued by the group and a stay order passed but it was lifted
within a day and did not affect the film’s release.

Directed by Soumik Sen, which movie is this, whose name differs from the
documentary only by one letter?
• X- Gulabi Gang
• Y- Gulaab Gang
1. The Godfather 17. Death of A Salesman
2. Love, Death and Robots 18. First Indian film to be released in
3. Hanksy 70mm
4. Ugly 19. Fatehpur Sikri; BV Doshi- First
5. Goopi-Bagha Indian architect to win Pritzker Prize
6. Jorge Luis Borges 20. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez;
7. Sydney Opera House Watchmen
8. Surendra Mohan Pathak 21. Such A Long Journey by Rohinton
9. Yayoi Kusama Mistry
10. Jane Eyre 22. Guillermo Del Toro; Hideo Kojima
11. Karadi Tales 23. Shakuntala; Anand Math
12. The Scream 24. X- Gulabi Gang
13. Sonny Corleone’s death Y- Gulaab Gang
14. Travancore
15. Dadaism
16. Safdar Hashmi
Thanks!
Finals will begin shortly.