SABARI GANESH

I realized a significant phenomenon in students of today’s generation. They are tech savvy. And one enviable fact is that they are not like us who completed matriculation some eight years ago.

I was surprised to see the geeks of Chennai yesterday when I volunteered on behalf of our company to Chennai leg of TCS IT WIZ 2015 conducted at Music Academy, TTK Road. I never expected students to throw answers so convincingly to complex and intertwined questions related to information technology.

The quiz master himself confessed that students from Chennai, Bangalore and Pune are clever in many aspects of education and the competition among them is so fierce that the whole nation usually looks into the Chennai leg of this quiz.

I was in a team of TCS volunteers who were sitting among the noisy 1600 students. We were awestruck when we observed the students correlating several facts into a sharp answer within few seconds. We were simply looking into each other faces with awe and our mouth wide open.

The most striking answer came from the winning team for a question asked about an app GottaGo which shows us nearest accessible restrooms by detecting our location through GPS. When the answer toilet was uttered confidently by the student, everyone in the auditorium burst into laughter, but later gave a thunderous appreciation when they came to know the answer was damn correct.

There were questions related to internet, applications, video games, processors which needed an upto date knowledge of everything happening the world of IT.

There was a question about a TCS initiative in the field of IT. And I have to confess that we, loyal employees of TCS, who were witnessing the event are not aware of that initiative by our employer. But these geeks knew it and answered it to our amusement.

And the event was concluded with a team of two boys from St. Patrick Matric Higher Secondary school, Pondicherry in class 9 and 10 respectively, emerging as the winners putting behind the likes of students from class 11 and 12. And they are going to participate in the grand final at The Taj, Mumbai in December. I wish those two kids to continue the same temper and go ahead to win the final.