Circus Quizzing

Yesterday night, I had my first skirmish with circus quizzing. The occasion was the Brand Equity Finals by Derek O' Brien. I was in Mumbai for the weekend, oblivious of the fact that there was a final going to happen on the Sunday evening. I came to know when I got a call from a friend (Nishith) who was also in Mumbai. I was not much interested in going, but then I had nothing better to do in the evening and decided to go. There was a newspaper clipping in the TOI which one had to exchange at Planet M to get 2 passes. Me and my quiz partner for the last couple of quizzes, Sovan, smart as we are, went without the passes.
When we reached the MMRDA grounds, there was a long queue and we realised that we needed to have passes to get in. With no Planet M nearby, our hopes of getting in seemed bleak. We were on the verge of panic. Somehow serendipity came to our rescue again. In comes a guy who asks us to which gate to go to. We tell him and say that we are looking for passes. This dude has one extra pass and he solves half our problem. And somehow we ask other people and jugaad (hindi slang for arrange) another pass as well, and find ourselves inside the enclosure.
Then the circus began. First we had a performance by some guy called Jaggi D (or whtever his name is, Punju guy whose song is a part of Rishi Rich project) which was absolutely rubbish. He even came in a tricolour jacket. These pseudo Indians who are born and live outside the country think that they can better connect with Indians wy dressing in such a manner.
Then there were two semi finals of 4 rounds each. At the end of these semifinals there was yet another performace by Raghav. While it was slightly better than the previous performance, it was nothing to write home about. Ah and then the final. It lasted just 6 rounds or so and Citibank, Chennai turned out to be eventual winners defeating the favourites (on the basis of the semifinal performance) SBI, Mumbai by a whisker. The Mumbai team rocked the semifinal but were a bit slow off the blocks in the final. As the last buzzer round began, they were at the third position 25 points adrift of Citibank. With 2 questions to go, they had come within 5 points of the leaders. Citibank held their nerves to answer the last question and win the quiz.
The quality of the questions was not great. Too much glitter and glamour (in the form of a Swiss girl by the name of Nicole, or was it Karol?) instead of good old hardcore quizzing. Derek came up with some wisecracks now and then to entertain the crowd. It was all too filmi like all Time events. I'd put it as a more popular (representing or appealing to or adapted for the benefit of the people at large) quiz than the one which would appeal to a quiz buff. What was most disappointing was that it was all to short, and had too less content. It was over as soon as it began, a bit of an anti-climax.