By Jawad Haroon from Beaconhouse National University.

Just like that, just about. A number of School of Liberal Arts (SLA) honors students were nominated for participation, but upon learning that only two could compete, the Literatures and Languages Department decided to give two bright and promising new entrants a shot. The BNU team that took top honors, after a tough and some seriously exciting five rounds, hence consisted of first-year MA student Haseeb Asif and third-year BA student Hira Azmat, both of whom enrolled at the university this semester—backed up by one of our already well-vaunted freshmen, Palvashay Sethi and Haroon Qureshi, a perennial literary powerhouse at SLA currently completing his Masters.

Haseeb and Hira stood second in the first round, which consisted of a set of forty miscellaneous questions, to be answered by all teams in one timed sitting. BNU then went up against Kinnaird College in the second round. Both teams answered six of seven questions correctly; hence, all tied, both sallied on to the next stage.

In the third round teams opted for questions in specific categories: BNU selected Religion and Mythology and Literature and Art, and secured five of six questions. Other teams, including Punjab University, exited the competition at this stage, leaving only Kinnaird College, the Salamat International Campus for Advanced Studies (SICAS) and BNU still in the hunt for glory.

The penultimate round saw the excitement hitting a pre-climactic peak. Responding to multimedia-based questions, the on-song SICAS team got three of four questions right and sailed self-assuredly through to the final. Locking horns for the second time, Kinnaird College and BNU each managed to answer two of four questions correctly in this round, leaving them all tied up again.

This time the deadlock was to be broken by sudden-death. In extra time, the BNU team held its nerve, nailing the first question posed: Kinnaird slipped on theirs. And there was BNU—in the final, out of nowhere.

SICAS and BNU staged dramatically opposite starts to the ten-question final round. Just as SICAS secured their first three questions, BNU bungled theirs—including a lovely tongue twist on the Vitruvian Man (henceforth Universal Man in SLA folklore, courtesy Michael Hussey). Taking a fancy to the ICAS boys, a rotund and gregarious fat lady in the corner of the auditorium was seen readying herself, about to belt out a eulogy to the ‘heroic but alas’ effort by BNU, prematurely.

SICAS wilted in the final sway, dropping their last seven questions. On the opposite sway up, BNU hammered home six of the last seven questions, and in the end walked away quite comfortably with the cup.

“We came, we conquered, we had samosas,” concluded Haseeb Asif aptly afterwards.