“We came, we saw…we screwed it up”

One of the best ways of making easy money in this world is through quizzing – not to leave out the additional benefit of not having to pay tax. It wouldn’t then be very much surprising that this truth would have dawned on others too. For years, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Calcutta have vied for the unofficial title of “The Quizzing Capital of India”. For a person who began quizzing quite late in life (during my ‘Engineering’ days), I was surprised when around 450 teams turned up for the Landmark Quiz on November 1st at the Chowdiah Hall. I had not yet witnessed the Odyssey Quiz.

I had heard of the Odyssey Quiz in the past. They advertise it as ‘The biggest Open Quiz in India’. I didn’t think much of it when it saw the mail for the 2005 edition, to be held on January 26th, the Republic Day. But then, in a weak moment, I, along with Vinay and Arindam decided to go ahead and give it a try. We were further pumped up by the fact that during the preceding weekend, we managed to qualify for the finals of the KQA monthly quiz (what happened in the final is an altogether different story).

So we ended up booking tickets to take us to Chennai. We were to return on the same day (and that too, in AC first class). I was more than happy, since the trip would give me an opportunity to indulge in a less glamorous (to the common man) and much maligned hobby – train spotting. As D-Day dawned, we reached Bangalore City station in the wee hours of the morning, (clad in the thickest jackets to beat the cold) catch the Lalbagh Express. To my disappointment, all the seats in our coach were facing away from the engine. Even though I took the window seat, it would mean that I would need to always glance backward with my SLR camera, to get a shot of any train.

Outside Bangalore, I got to see something which I’ve never bother to watch in the past one year – the sunrise. With the sun coming up, I took off my jacket to reveal the saffron-coloured kurta (with some Sanskrit inscriptions) I was wearing on that day. My teammates gaped in horror at it. Ever since the leading newspapers had carried my name on their front pages (“Ravi Subramaniam turns approver” – dated: Jan 21, 2005), they had been quite reluctant to take me along with them. However, I had paid for the tickets, leaving them with very little option.

As we pulled into Jolarpettai, I dropped a bombshell that one of my friends had contracted typhoid after drinking water from the station. After hearing this, Vinay went into a fast, refusing to eat anything which had “local water content” in it. We would go on to survive the journey on potato chips and biscuits. Arindam had had the common sense to bring along some sandwiches. By the time we reached Chennai Central I had managed to getaround 10 photographs of trains, much to the amusement (or was it disgust?) of my teammates.

The ride by auto rickshaw to the venue was memorable. For me, it brought back memories from the two years I had spent there. Vinay was rather impressed by the fact that we spotted at least four Honda City cars during our 15-minute drive to the venue – the great Music Academy.

Other than a few volunteers running around the place, the venue looked rather deserted. The organizers assured us of our registration. We escaped for a lavish lunch across the road. I managed to call up some of my friends and acquaintances, and also sprain my ankle quite badly - as a result of which Vinay had to abandon his ambition to visit the Landmark bookstore.

By the time we crossed the road back, the venue was an ocean of people. To make things worse, we did not have our registration number. To my utter surprise, I found that almost 900 teams had turned up! After a bit of haggling, we managed to find our team name – Norwegian Midnight (why ”Norwegian Midnight”?? beats me! Ask Vinay) scribbled somewhere in the list of registrations. We were assured of a seat!

The Music Academy is perhaps one of the oldest public halls in the city of Chennai – a place coveted by the lovers of Carnatic Music. To give a concert there is a feather in the cap of any musician. It was definitely great to be back there after four years. The hall filled up in no time. Teams had come from everywhere – Trichy, Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and even from New Delhi.

The quizmaster, Praveen Goday (Vinay found a passing resemblance of Benny Hinn in him) made a grand appearance at exactly 3:00 p.m. – on time. The questions for the prelims sounded unusually easy, compared to some of the quizzes we have attended. From the dimensions of the Indian National Flag to Amitabh Bachhan’s career as a narrator, we were quizzed on anything under (and over) the sun. Goday even had some tricks up his sleeve – at the end of question 28, from somewhere in the audience; a mobile phone started ringing. As some of the contestants wondered which idiot had forgotten to switch off his mobile phone, it turned out to be question number 29. Goday asked us to identify the composer of the piece! As the answers were being announced, we realized that missing even a single question was going to cost us a lot. The familiar oohs and aahs of the contestants could be heard everywhere. We managed to score 21 out of 35 – one more than Mrs. Gayatri, the middle-aged lady sitting behind us. We soon learnt that she and her son were the runners-up from the previous year’s edition!

The final 8 consisted of some well-known names in quizzing. QED - perhaps one of the best teams in South India - were the defending champions. Giving them company on stage were the husband and wife team from Chennai – the Jayakumars, V V Ramanan, Avinash Mudaliar, Arul Mani and our own Ramkey (“Only when we got on stage did we realize the magnitude of the quiz - when we had a look at the upper-most gallery”: says Ramkey). The quiz itself was an audio-visual treat. From Project 119 – the Chinese target to win 119 gold medals in sports they are weak in, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to how the Thyagaraja composition “Chakkani Raja” was used by girls in Thanjavur to communicate their preferences to prospective bridegrooms, the audience was treated to a scintillating brain-war. Time passed in a jiffy and soon, we were at the end of the day - QED had managed to hold off the challenge of the Jayakumars and Avinash, to defend their title.

As we scrambled out of the great hall and made our way to the station, Vinay remarked: “Man! It was worth coming all the way!” (A comfortable sleep in AC first class awaited us) For me, it was a trip down memory lane – to the place where I started quizzing as an amateur. We knew we never stood a chance to qualify for the finals. But still we gave it our best. And perhaps, the greatest gain from the trip was Arindam’s brain-wave, which gave us our new team name: “We came, we saw …we screwed it up.”