The Gut Runners " Quiz Story"
Its been over 15 months since coming to Bangalore the new economy town from the old economy kolkata and some beautiful things have happened in my evolution as a collector of myriad facts.
I have been quizzing since my days in anand ,gujarat. Anand though was the answer to more quiz questions than the number of quizzes it hosted.
Schooling in Delhi , helped shape up a little in quizzes.My dad for some reason only read business books( guess 80' were the heydays of Biz Guru's) and so i read them.New more corporate facts than an avg kid. But also knew less fables and comics.
i attended DU for a month. Now that's where some quizzing did happen , but i decided an engg degree from NIT Jamshedpur was the best thing to acquire in life.
The acquisition though came at the cost of quizzing. Sitting in the steel heartland , limited my quiz cicrcuit to hosting them and a few occasional excursion trips to kgp and dhanbad.My college was truly an enigma. How an institute could survive on suck lack of govt attention and mismanagement is a tribute to the students leveraging the education to cling on to a better future.
Read some stuff, but there wasn't much to pick up from old second hand sakchi book shops. The quizzing peer group was small, dispersed and fighting its own demons.We just wanted to get back to our city sheltered environments in one piece (body and soul) with a degree and hopefully a job in hand.So quizzing was the last thing on my mind. Though we all chipped in with our bit through LDS( the lit soc)
In the end managed to accomplish all the three.Moved over from there to xl. Xl was literally the other side of the railway tracks for me.The journey from NIT to XL is huge in a very different way.Only deepak bhat ,mansij majumdar and i would possibly know that. The Delhi city brat , went back to the city civility from the engg college in the cow belt state. But the quizzing scene still did not change. a packed first year and desire to jog in 2nd year made sure that i did not make any quizzical journeys. This despite the fact that for the first time i had in my class more than a couple quizzers.
Then life took me to ITC and Vizag. One gorgeous year , of which i have no memories as my life was onto bigger problems. None were job linked as i had a ball of a time touring up country markets and visiting the Orissa hinterland . It was the return of the native. But quizzing , well i realised that Vizag Steel had a great quiz team when i met them in Cal.
And so after the year in Vizag moved to Cal.Went to a small sos quiz on a Saturday for the lack of a better entertainment option . Qualified , came 3rd and the bug came back to haunt me. Went to Tata Crucible 2006 , and qualified tops and came last. But the bug was on and i had lots of catching up to do.Quizzing introduced the antidote to all my problems. Friends and colleagues , with similar calibres in school were now eons ahead.I was rusty, but the bug was on. Kolkata quizzing truly improved me. By the time i left , i was a regular in finals, lots of podium finishes in biz quizzes(Clay Court in the language of general quizzers) and some in the general ones( the elusive grass). But i had improved.
And then i got transferred to Bangalore.I'll be honest , getting into a final was to me now an achievement akin to a podium finish.Tata Crucible 2007 , no qualification.
So i quit quizzing.For 1 month until a friend from cal came down. Together we went. Think we failed to qualify for the first 8 quizzes. But by the 8th we had 2 more partners and at least a full string quartet.
Sometime in the same season , the gut running ( check chariots of fire for what a gut runner is) amateur got a real lucky break. BT Acumen 2007. Won it. I had lost BT Acumen 2006 from cal on a buzzer.
The win helped keep the already waning passion alive.But then the grass court season restarted and the "just missed qualifying syndrome" started again. But the misses were becoming nearer. I think our quartet managed 3 qualifications.3 on some 14-15 quizzes.Liked it. I was improving. In 2008 i restarted going to opus , a pub quiz.Its beautiful in a manner so unique to itself. If Open quizzing is honourable , opus and pub quizzing is beautiful. That too helps. It keeps you in shape in a manner that you don't realise.
2008 has been better.Have managed some more qualifications. The near misses are still becoming nearer. I am still improving. The lack of adequate college reading has left me with major flaws in my technique. Opus is becoming more intense.But the beauty is still there.The desire is still on. Think my record for Grass Courts is now is at 2/6 , which is a major improvement on 3/15. And i am still counting only qualifications. Podium is hopefully a couple of years/seasons away.But the clay court season got off to a good start. Brand equity was a narrow miss and Tata Crucible was a win.
May the rub of the green continue.
I have been quizzing since my days in anand ,gujarat. Anand though was the answer to more quiz questions than the number of quizzes it hosted.
Schooling in Delhi , helped shape up a little in quizzes.My dad for some reason only read business books( guess 80' were the heydays of Biz Guru's) and so i read them.New more corporate facts than an avg kid. But also knew less fables and comics.
i attended DU for a month. Now that's where some quizzing did happen , but i decided an engg degree from NIT Jamshedpur was the best thing to acquire in life.
The acquisition though came at the cost of quizzing. Sitting in the steel heartland , limited my quiz cicrcuit to hosting them and a few occasional excursion trips to kgp and dhanbad.My college was truly an enigma. How an institute could survive on suck lack of govt attention and mismanagement is a tribute to the students leveraging the education to cling on to a better future.
Read some stuff, but there wasn't much to pick up from old second hand sakchi book shops. The quizzing peer group was small, dispersed and fighting its own demons.We just wanted to get back to our city sheltered environments in one piece (body and soul) with a degree and hopefully a job in hand.So quizzing was the last thing on my mind. Though we all chipped in with our bit through LDS( the lit soc)
In the end managed to accomplish all the three.Moved over from there to xl. Xl was literally the other side of the railway tracks for me.The journey from NIT to XL is huge in a very different way.Only deepak bhat ,mansij majumdar and i would possibly know that. The Delhi city brat , went back to the city civility from the engg college in the cow belt state. But the quizzing scene still did not change. a packed first year and desire to jog in 2nd year made sure that i did not make any quizzical journeys. This despite the fact that for the first time i had in my class more than a couple quizzers.
Then life took me to ITC and Vizag. One gorgeous year , of which i have no memories as my life was onto bigger problems. None were job linked as i had a ball of a time touring up country markets and visiting the Orissa hinterland . It was the return of the native. But quizzing , well i realised that Vizag Steel had a great quiz team when i met them in Cal.
And so after the year in Vizag moved to Cal.Went to a small sos quiz on a Saturday for the lack of a better entertainment option . Qualified , came 3rd and the bug came back to haunt me. Went to Tata Crucible 2006 , and qualified tops and came last. But the bug was on and i had lots of catching up to do.Quizzing introduced the antidote to all my problems. Friends and colleagues , with similar calibres in school were now eons ahead.I was rusty, but the bug was on. Kolkata quizzing truly improved me. By the time i left , i was a regular in finals, lots of podium finishes in biz quizzes(Clay Court in the language of general quizzers) and some in the general ones( the elusive grass). But i had improved.
And then i got transferred to Bangalore.I'll be honest , getting into a final was to me now an achievement akin to a podium finish.Tata Crucible 2007 , no qualification.
So i quit quizzing.For 1 month until a friend from cal came down. Together we went. Think we failed to qualify for the first 8 quizzes. But by the 8th we had 2 more partners and at least a full string quartet.
Sometime in the same season , the gut running ( check chariots of fire for what a gut runner is) amateur got a real lucky break. BT Acumen 2007. Won it. I had lost BT Acumen 2006 from cal on a buzzer.
The win helped keep the already waning passion alive.But then the grass court season restarted and the "just missed qualifying syndrome" started again. But the misses were becoming nearer. I think our quartet managed 3 qualifications.3 on some 14-15 quizzes.Liked it. I was improving. In 2008 i restarted going to opus , a pub quiz.Its beautiful in a manner so unique to itself. If Open quizzing is honourable , opus and pub quizzing is beautiful. That too helps. It keeps you in shape in a manner that you don't realise.
2008 has been better.Have managed some more qualifications. The near misses are still becoming nearer. I am still improving. The lack of adequate college reading has left me with major flaws in my technique. Opus is becoming more intense.But the beauty is still there.The desire is still on. Think my record for Grass Courts is now is at 2/6 , which is a major improvement on 3/15. And i am still counting only qualifications. Podium is hopefully a couple of years/seasons away.But the clay court season got off to a good start. Brand equity was a narrow miss and Tata Crucible was a win.
May the rub of the green continue.
posted by tanmay at
12:34 AM
7 Comments
