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Prizes for guessing

Preeti Mehra

Guess who is one of the recipients of the 2001 Limca Book of Records' `People of the Year Awards'? A quizzer with the Midas touch. No, not Amitabh Bachchan, whom you see on your screen every day, but the man behind many a quiz, including Kaun Banega Cror epati --- Siddhartha Basu.

If someone made quizzing a close second to the national timepass of cricketing, it's this Delhi University theatre director. And he has done it with panache since the launch of Quiz Time in 1988 on Doordarshan.

Sharing the People of the Year Awards with him are persons from many walks of life, each with exceptional abilities. There's Dr K.M. Cherian, India's first heart-lung surgeon with more than 23,700 surgeries to his credit. He is also the founder of the Ma dras Medical Mission (MMM), a non-profit cardiac speciality hospital in Chennai.

Awardee K.S. Chithra is the singing sensation who has an unbeatable repertoire of 11,000 songs in several languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali. Chithra has won State awards eleven times in a row;

Recipient S. Vijayalakshmi is the first woman grandmaster and four-time national chess champion with a 3,387 ELO rating. And last, but not the least, is the founder of The Kodava Hockey Academy, Pandandi Kuttani Kuttappa, who has campaigned to mainstream the sport once again. Kudos to all of them.