Participants at the curd-eating competition at Sri Arvind Mahila College in Patna on Friday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, Jan. 13: Sri Arvind Mahila College celebrated Makar Sankranti today, two days ahead of the festival, with a curd-eating competition on the campus.

As many as 150 teaching and non-teaching employees fought it out for the first prize, which eventually went to Ajay Kumar, head of department, mathematics. He clinched the feat for devouring 2.5kg curd in 15 minutes.

Principal Asha Singh who organised the competition said she came up with the idea because of her Mithilanchal roots.

She said: “This is my fourth year at this college. The last three years, I planned a dahi-chura (curd and flattened rice) party during Makar Sankranti for my teaching and non-teaching colleagues. But this year, I thought to celebrate it differently and organised this competition. I am from Mithilanchal where curd is a part of the lifestyle and tradition. Whenever, we have guests at home in Mithilanchal, we offer them dahi-chura if there is nothing else. It’s considered a sweet gesture.”

A sweet gesture, it was for the participants too, who enjoyed gulping down plateful of curd during the competition.

Time or quantity was not a worry as there wasn’t any limitation on consuming curd. All that the contestants had to do was eat as much as they could.

Librarian Preeta Jha came a close second, finishing 2kg curd in 20 minutes.

Sixty-eight-year-old Anjana Ganguly, retired music teacher, JD Women’s College, was the only outsider at the contest. She got the third prize for eating 1kg curd in 30 minutes. “Winning a competition at this age feels great,” said Ganguly.

Kumar said: “My only strategy was not to stop for a moment. I knew if I stopped even once, it would break my momentum, so I kept my eyes closed and ate as much curd as I could at one go.”

Jha said: “It is great. I came second among so many people. I can never have so much curd at home. I was myself surprised when I realised had polished off 2kg curd.”