By Amita Rao

On Saturday, June 20th, ISW organized the 2020 Antakshari event, an annual spirited and fun competition, that brings out the ISW community’s passion for Hindi music. Unlike previous years, this year the event was held completely in a virtual setting using Zoom. Registrations poured in till the last minute, and at the end, there were 17 teams registered and eventually 12 teams participated.

To manage the teams easily, the teams were organized in 3 qualification rounds of 4 teams each. The winners of each qualification round would automatically move on to the Finals, along with 2 or 3 wildcards. The purpose of having the wildcards was to give a chance to teams who, due to any circumstances, may have ended up narrowly losing out in the qualification rounds.

This foreboded well for our winners who were actually the 6th and last team to make it to the Finals.

The actual competition clearly showed the talent and passion of the participants, who not only sang a myriad of beautiful songs but also were amazing in every aspect of the knowledge based rounds. Some of the songs in the rounds were structured as a tribute to a few illustrious Bollywood stars that left us too early. The Final Round was a close affair, with multiple teams within striking distance of first place.

But in the end, Musical Gaurs - Minakshi, Varun and Deepa (who joined us from California !) were able to increase their lead on the final stretch and ended up as Winners.

The Seths (Neha and Amit) took 2nd place.

And after a close tie breaker, Eat Love & Pray (Lopa and Amitabh) secured 3rd place.

Even though the other finalists gave a hard fought performance, there can only be 3 winners.

Kudos to all the participants for showing such enthusiasm. And also a big thank you to them for their patience while the organizers worked through some glitches due to the unusual setting of this event.

These events cannot be held without our equally enthusiastic and passionate audience who, even with this event being virtual, showed up and supported the event admirably.

Another important aspect of ISW Antakshari 2020 was that the entire event was broadcast live on ISW’s FaceBook page. Check it out if you missed it.

An edited version will shortly be available on ISW YouTube Channel.

The hosts - Santosh, Yogitha and Nikhil, along with ISW event organizers - Amita and Sarita were buoyed by the success of the event and are looking forward to host an equally, if not more, vibrant musical event next year.

Preliminary Rounds

Finals of Antakshari