When I was in school, on being asked whether I play any sport or not, I’d always reply in the affirmative. The enquirers would take a long hard look at my reed thin frame and think to themselves that appearances can be quite deceptive. And then I’d finally let the cat out of the bag. My sport of choice was quizzing. Back then, I’d feel my ego swelling each time I’d introduce myself as a quizzer. It took just two weeks of college for me to learn that I was not a N.E.R.D. but a nerd. Take all the dots out and there goes your fancy jargon down the drain.
The first time I realized that things were different now, was when on the eve of a major quiz, I couldn’t come up with any teammates. In school, the most crippling problem we faced was regarding which three or four people to put in the team out of the seven or eight who’d turn up. And here I was, at 10.30 in the night, literally begging a classmate (who by the way had never ever quizzed in his life) to bail us out the next day. I am pretty sure it was the promised chicken roll and not my damsel-in-distress act that finally got him convinced. We lost the quiz by a huge margin, being nowhere near the top three teams. But at the end of the day, it was the unrealized investment of twenty-five bucks on the chicken roll which this economics student took to heart the most.
Quizzing continued even after that memorable day, though landing a team mate hasn’t been nearly that entertaining.
It was sometime in February this year. I was sitting on the staircase just outside my statistic tutors place, trying to inspire myself to get through the next two hours without the embarrassment of him having to wake me up when it was over. It had been a long day at college and something just told me that it wasn’t going to get any better. Well, from that day onwards I’ve stopped believing in premonitions. One moment I’m awaiting the drudgery of normal distribution, the next moment I’m making a mad dash home. Reason? Since the winners of the Kolkata edition of the IMS Quotient can’t make it for the national quiz finals, the next placed team has to fill in for them. And we have the ample time of 15 hours to kill before we board our flight. Oh, just a small detail that I forgot to mention. The finals were going to be held on board the Star Cruise Libra.
If my reaction when I heard the news was enough to prompt the person on the other side of the phone (in this case being the quizmaster Charanpreet Singh himself) to urgently seek the services of a reputed ear specialist, my teammate Georgie’s outpourings were no less ecstatic.
Me: “GEORGIE… (Pant, pant)…IMS QUOTIENT…MUMBAI... (Pant, pant)…CRUISE…US…TOMORROW! ’’
Georgie: ‘‘Ok.’’
Me: ‘‘Huh? Did I mention the cruise?
Georgie: “Yeah, you did.”
Me: “You’re not excited?’’
Georgie: ‘‘No, I am.’’
Me: ‘‘Well, you’re doing a pretty swell job of expressing it.”
No wonder the guy gets frustrated whenever I’m too hyper on stage (which basically amounts to every time I’m on stage).
Let me now cut to the chase. No reader in his right mind would want to go through the intricacies of a hyper-active girl packing her suitcase in less than 15 minutes. There might be a little more interest in the details of the journey to Mumbai, but the flight was as bland as the food served (I intentionally refrain from naming the said airline). We were ferried straight from the airport to the docks to board our cruise to Goa, yes that’s right, Goa. Once on board we were informed that if we could kindly take a bit of time off from our busy schedules, the semifinals would start in about an hour’s time. Well, I guess we figured that we should do the organizers a favour by turning up to take part. After all, they were paying for our little vacation.
The less is said of the quiz, the better. Or rather, the less is said of our performance, the better. To keep it short and simple, we were decimated. Thankfully, we had a shoulder, in fact lots of shoulders to cry on. Out of the twenty four teams from all over the country, only six made it to the grand finale, the top two from each semifinal. While the latter prepared for another day of fighting it out to emerge as the ultimate winners, the rest of us prepared for Goa.
The next day saw two bus-loads of us wreaking havoc on the beautiful state of Goa. Don’t worry, we didn’t deface the churches or litter the beaches. Our singing in the bus was enough to compel the entire tourist population to seek shelter elsewhere. It was infact the bus ride which brought us all closer. Previously, it was just names and places being thrown at us. Even afterwards, the most difficult thing was to remember who was from which city. But the easiest thing was to make friends.
Sundown saw us weary souls trudging back to the cruise liner for another round of intense partying (with booze on the house), and oh yeah, the quiz finals. A lot of people got tipsy, the details of which have to be kept under wraps by the author of this article for fear of a back-lash from certain quarters. For the people still left standing, it was a night of endless rounds of coffee and playing Trivial Pursuit, and the not-so trivial-pursuit of staying awake to watch the sun-rise. Well, sleep-deprivation is a difficult proposition, as I soon discovered once I got back to Kolkata. But even the apology of a sunrise we caught the next morning, couldn’t spoil the fact that we had a whale of a good time. The morning was spent at cheering on our ring-leader Ravi Handa, who just happened to be one of the organizers, as he made a bomb at the casino using math. Sure made me wish I hadn’t slept through all the probability classes at statistics tuition. Damn!
We returned to Kolkata as the glorious losers. Well, maybe not so glorious after all, but don’t deny me my moment of optimistic ambiguity. However, as word spread of our little cruise to Goa, so did our popularity. All of a sudden we have people we hardly ever talk to coming up to us and asking about the trip. Wonder whether it had anything to do with the Orkut taglines like “Sunny….Back from the cruise!”, “Preyoshi…. Check my album for Goa pics”. Georgie’s was the best: “Georgie Thomas”.
This some may think calls for celebration. After all, isn’t this a step towards popularizing our niche sport? Nerds of the world, rejoice! But face it people, quizzing will never be as mainstream as cricket. It’s still the nerdiest of sports, only the perks have become much more cooler. Nobody quizzes just for the perks, they quiz for the love of showing off that they know more than others. But if the cool prizes bring people in, the more the merrier.
In college, my friends have now nicknamed me the hound. They say it’s because I sniff out quizzes like a dog. Just an hour ago, a friend called to ask about some notes and then ended up asking whether she could come to watch next time some quiz was on. She wanted to see what it actually is like before she starts participating. Hmm, the Hound. Sounds better than nerd any day.
Preyoshi Ganguly
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