The two unlikely winners of the stiffly-fought Fame Gurukul contest – Qazi Touqeer, the Kashmiri with a starry ambition of becoming an actor and Ruprekha Banerjee, the simple Bengali damsel – are ready to rock

Her Hindi accent was the butt of many a joke.... His flamboyant manners overshadowed his singing talent. Who would have thought that Ruprekha Banerjee and Qazi Touqeer would walk away as the victorious ‘Fame Jodi’, when there were so many other less-flawed singers in the running? But then, as the stiffly-fought Fame Gurukul contest, on Sony Entertainment Television, reached a crescendo, it was as much about melodious vocal chords as about the ability to withstand the tensions of its pressure-cooker atmosphere.“I have inherited my fighting spirit from my parents,” is the surprising revelation of the mishti-voiced Ruprekha. Nobody would have guessed there was so much steel beneath that soft demeanour! “I had a bishwas when I entered Fame Gurukul that I would be a part of the Fame Jodi,” she adds, matter-of-factly. As matter-of-factly as she transformed from a simple Bengali damsel into a spaghetti-strapped glamour doll when the cameras rolled. Qazi, loved by his fans as much for his curly locks and warm, brown eyes as for the peppy numbers he crooned, was equally sure that he would be one half of the winning duo. With a “Nothing is impossible” as his signature line, he was the unfazed enfant terrible of Gurukul, the favourite punching bag whom nobody took seriously as a singer because of his starry ambition to be an actor. Nobody, except lakhs and lakhs of frenzied viewers who, time and again, rescued him from the ‘danger zone’. “Everybody used to tell me that I didn’t deserve to be in Fame Gurukul,” recounts the youngster without rancour. “But, instead of breaking down, like a lot of the contestants, I would get goaded by such comments to work harder. I got stronger with each barb. And, finally, I proved them all wrong! Even the judges accepted me as a singer, with Shankar Mahadevanji, saying, ‘This Fame Gurukul is all about Qazi.’”

Confidence, determination, tremendous zest and an unwavering focus on their goal saw these two handicap-ridden candidates battle it out, week after week, till that final moment of triumph, when Qazi lived up to his mother’s implicit belief that he would come home a winner and Ruprekha made her father’s prophecy come true. “Yeh ladki kuch karegi,” the proud father had predicted when Rupu, all of nine, had first plonked herself before a harmonium and rendered a ditty, tune-perfect. With no signs of battle fatigue, the two squabbling contestants mock fight for our lensman, breaking into song as they do so. “Yeh kaisa ladka hain,” teases Rupu, and Qazi retaliates, spiritedly, with a “Yeh kaisi ladki hain”.

White textured shirt, by Rocky S, for Boulevard Benzer. Turquoise lace dress, at Aftershock.