Not so long ago, another seed was sown under the aegis of the Ficus Religiosa when The Quiz Corp.'s dream to conduct an exclusive National level Inter-collegiate Quiz festival was conceived. The dream came true when the Quizfest-'Under the Peepal Tree' was conducted for the first time last year under the auspices of renowned quizmaster Avinash H. Mudaliar.

Graced by the participation of over fifty teams, the first ever inter-collegiate quiz fest was dominated by the National Law School of India. There were also creditable performances from out-station teams like KREC (Suratkal) , IIT (Bombay) and BITS ( Pilani). The sight of many quiz enthusiastic school teams in the audience was a pleasant surprise to us, and their retaining the same seats in the audience for the complete duration of the fest was indicative of the amount of interest the quizzes generated.

The fest started off with the preliminary written rounds for the India quiz and the Science quiz. This was followed by the corporate quiz. Among the teams that took part in the corporate quiz were : Smithkline Beecham, Motorola, Wipro and Siemens. The quiz master Mr.Movin Miranda (now in Malaysia) is a reputed name in quizzing circles all over the country. The questions were business oriented and the quiz was won by Smithkline Beecham.

The first event on the second day was the Science quiz which was a simple affair with some very interesting visuals. The IIT’ans from Mumbai clinched the issue with an excellent team performance.

Funda of the quiz: He did a detailed research on how the Mridangam and the Tabla unlike other drums produce harmonic overtones and concluded that they may accompany stringed instruments like the violin. Who?

Answer : C.V.Raman

This was followed by the finals of the India quiz which was a longish quiz with a fantastic audio round to end with. The teams from The National Law school dominated the low scoring affair.

Funda of the quiz: On Dec 27th,1989 Times of India had an editorial which marked the Platinum Jubliee of the crossword in which it pays rich tribute to someone who used to solve the puzzle in eight minutes.Who?

Answer : Indra Gandhi

The grand finale , fittingly , was on the final day. It started off with a goliath hundred question written preliminary round for the general quiz followed by an extremely tough Audio Visual Quiz preliminary round. The finals of the general quiz, in true Quiz Corp. fashion, comprised of questions that held the entire audience in awe.

Funda of the quiz: Who is credited to have cast the deciding vote in the senate for the abolition of slavery after the civil war?

Answer : P. T. Barnum , the pioneer of the circus.

The curtains came down on Under the Peepal Tree ’99 with the ultimate audio-visual extravaganza – the finals of the AV quiz. The compilation of over two hundred audio and visual pieces was by far the largest ever seen in any event of this nature.

The final results of the five quizzes were as follows:

India Quiz	Winners	National Law School of India
	Second	National Law School of India
	Third	R.V.C.E. , Bangalore
	Participation	50 teams
Science Quiz	Winners	IIT , Mumbai
	Second	BITS, Pilani and Bangalore Medical College
	Third	R.V.C.E. , Bangalore
	Participation	40 teams
General Quiz	Winners	National Law School of India
	Second	IIT, Bombay
	Third	KREC , Suratkal
	Participation	70 teams
Audio Visual Quiz	Winners	National Law School of India
	Second	National Law School of India
	Third	R.V.C.E., Bangalore
	Participation	50 teams
Corporate Quiz	Special Guest Quizmaster	Mr. Movin Miranda
	Winners	Smithkline Beecham Ltd.

Held over three days, the fest comprised of five quizzes which brought out the best not only from the competing teams but also from the question setters. The first edition of Under the Peepal Tree was an overwhelming success. Under the Peepal Tree, is now the leading event on the R.V. quizzing calender. This year we hope to double the participation while retaining the high standards set last year.