Antakshari regales Ahmedabad

The winners of the show, organised by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), Ahmedabad district panchayat, and the police commissionerate, were the Afsane team of Hetal Dave, Harsha Sabnoor, and Poonam Gadhvi. In the semi-finals and finals, Deewane, Parwane, Mastane failed to match the Hindi film song knowledge of Afsane. The visual and the mixed bag rounds left them far behind.

But it was also winning show for Kapoor and Joshi, who kept the 16,000 strong audience glued to their seats for nearly six hours. Ever the showman, Kapoor went up in a fire-brigade snorkel and showered flowers on the crowd, all the while singing `Vande Mataram’. As the same time banners with Vande Mataram went up.

After sobbing uncontrollably while singing `Mera Rang Dey Basanti…’, Kapoor explained that he couldn’t but remember while singing that his great grandfather, Gangaram Kapoor, a freedom fighter, had been hanged to death in Sialkot by the British. Seeing Kapoor in tears, Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel and Health Minister Ashok Bhatt went up to the stage and — it was their turn to shower petals on him.

Kapoor told the audience, “Our forefathers died for the country, let us at least live for the country”.

Following the same pattern as the television show, the hosts made participants Nidhi Dholakia, Chand Pardesi, Bhavan Chaleja, Mital Bhatt, Shashank Shukla, Neelu Dave, Shruti Vipul, Hemal Bhatt, Parul Joshi, Hetal Dave, Harsha Sabnoor and Poonam Ghadvi go through a variety of test rounds. In one, they were made to sing songs based on family relations, and in another, a jumble round, participants had to sing songs which included all four words given to them by other teams. All participants were given shields by AMC. The winners were given gift cheques of Rs 10,000 each, besides arrangement for a stay at Diu. The runners-up went home with cheques of Rs 7,000 each. They get the trip to Diu, too.

Earlier inaugrating the programme the Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel assured that the fund collected from the programme would be used for the needy people. The district Panchayat President Ramilaben Desai handed over a cheque of Rs 51 lakh to the chief minister. Municipal commissioner B K Sinha will hand over a cheque to the chief minister once the collection accounts are settled.