Actress Mridula Baruah giving away prizes of the Purabi cookery contest. Picture by S.H. Patgiri

March 1: Don Bosco School, Guwahati, emerged winners at a keenly fought Purabi quiz contest at Kumar Bhaskar Natya Mandir in the city on Saturday.

The team was adjudged the best among 60 others from the 30 city-based schools (both English-medium and vernacular-medium) that participated in the contest. Don Bosco scored 85 points, closely followed by Kendriya Vidyalaya, Noonmati, with 80 points. The city-based St Stephens School team came third in the contest.

The winners included Rupankan Daas, Pratyush P. Borgohain and Adya Gautam from Don Bosco School, Aghrajyoti Chakravarty, Rupam Das, Prabir Talukdar from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Noonmati and Ankit Kumar Som, Siddhartha Bhowmik and Rishab Dewan from St Stephens School.

The quiz, which was conducted by Dilip Kumar Baruah, was organised by West Assam Milk Producers’ Co-operative Union Limited (WAMUL) as part of its ongoing milk awareness campaign.

“The campaign has twin objectives. Firstly, to provide a platform to the students to showcase their talent and groom them to face the competitive world and secondly, to create awareness about milk and milk-related matters,” said J. Choudhury, managing director, WAMUL.

“We plan to make it the biggest quiz event in the entire Northeast. We can also make it a national event in the years to come,” added Choudhury.

Dilip Kumar Dutta from the department of mathematics, University of Rhode Island in the US, inaugurated the quiz contest. In his inaugural address, Dutta said, “Even in the US it has been observed that students are prone to breaking their bones easily even in minor accidents. These students drink more of soft drinks and less of milk, leading to calcium deficiency.” He added, “The Bush administration has now banned the sale of soft drinks in school premises in the US and has advised parents and guardians to give children at least four glasses of milk a day.” Dutta appreciated the efforts of WAMUL in creating awareness about the attributes of milk, especially among school children. He considered the effort a timely one and in the right direction.

Purabi Dairy, a popular milk co-operative of the city, has made an encouraging debut. The cookery contest held by it to popularise milk products recently received encouraging response.

In all, there were 70 enthusiastic participants with their mouth-watering and innovative dishes at the contest, held at its Panjabari complex. On the sidelines, lucky draws and spot quiz competitions were also held for the participants and the invitees.

Prativa Saikia won the contest. The second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth positions went to Ameena Ahmed Hussain, Zarina Islam, Treen Sarma, Lipi Rahman and Karuna Devi Chakravarty respectively.

Encouraged by the success of the contest, Purabi Dairy has decided to promote it as a major socio-cultural event of the city in association with NGOs and women’s organisations.

The next event in the series for generating awareness about the benefits of milk, WAMUL will organise a Purabi debating contest for which the date & topic will be announced soon.

WAMUL is focussing on milk production in the hinterland of Guwahati through the Anand model of co-operative infrastructure. The programme will be re-launched at Malaibari near Khetri where a workshop on co-operative dairy development and rural self-employment will be organised to kickstart the programme.