The Weekend Rigmarole

I write after a long hiatus of ~ 8 years. It isn’t that I haven’t given a thought to writing in these 8 years, let me just put it this way, “there wasn’t too much to write about which wasn’t already being discussed on the internet”. With all the “noise” that surrounds us these days on social media, the good old blogs have lost relevance. Everything has become smaller – our gadgets have reduced in size; our homes have become more compact and so has our attention span. Drawing a parallel from Cricket: it’s the T-20 version (Twitter, Snapchat) which has become the apple of the eye and the good old test match (blogs, articles, Op-Eds etc.) is losing its sheen. Nevertheless, I want to take a plunge today.

I had the pleasure of going on a leisurely evening drive along with my father-in-law and the missus today. (I am visiting my in-laws). We saw lots of countryside during the 2-hour drive and absorbed the beauty as much as we could. We saw young kids playing in the fields, animals wander carefree in their natural habitat, local village folks sitting outside their homes and chatting. It seemed we were in a different world altogether, a world which does not worry about the traffic that builds up once people start leaving office, a world which does not care about what to cook at night (for they make do with whatever they have), a world which does not know that something called the internet exists (let alone the shenanigans of social media). At one of the spots, ~ 40 kms from my in-laws’ town something incredible happened. We stopped for a cup of tea and the tea vendor knew my father-in-law. After being introduced as his daughter and son-in-law, the tea seller did not want to let us go empty handed and quickly rushed to his home to get some local delicacy which he could give to us. This had us (missus and me) thinking if our generation, or the ones to come, could ever establish the bond/connect that our fathers’ generation has. Moreover, with us living in cities and chasing our metaphorical dreams, is it even possible to have such a bonding? This took me to one of my favourite subjects: ‘Technology’.

If you were to ask me, what is the greatest invention that man has produced in my lifetime, my answer to that would be ‘Internet’. With internet coming in, distances have reduced, information parity has increased and the applications of information technology has created employment and provided so much convenience to the lives of the people. I would be using internet and technology almost interchangeably from here on in the blog, assuming that I have made my point. With anything that creates so much positive, there ought to be a flip side to it which is often ignored. While internet has made us self-sufficient and independent in our cash-rich but time-poor lives, it has minimized human interaction altogether. Let me take a stab at all instances in my daily life where I adopt technology – I book a cab for my office commute, I order grocery while on my way to office (to be delivered at a later time), I order lunch, I get back home to realise I had forgotten to take the packet of salt which was much needed at home, I Dunzo it and it reaches home in 20 mins. Having the convenience to book the cab at my finger-tips does prevent me from the haggling I need to do with my auto-wallah but more often than not, I do not even know the person who is driving me. If there is any confusion with regards to which route to take, I do not even need to speak to anybody for Google Maps provides me real time satellite imagery with expected time to reach my destination. The good old charm of bargaining with the family grocery store has been replaced by tons of VC-backed cashbacks that the grocery app offers. The only way I come to know of any new snack stall that has opened in my locality is by seeing it in the food delivery app. If it’s not there, it doesn’t exist for me. And at 9:30 pm in the night, when I realise, I had to bring a packet of salt and it presents me with an opportunity to borrow it from the neighbor (& in the process get familiar), the Dunzo App constantly reminds me of ‘Why Fikar, Dunzo Kar’. This takes me back to the pertinent question, will our generation ever be as close to the eco system (physically) as our previous generation is?

Is it a question of the Jio-fication (internet penetration) levels being low and hence the smaller towns still have their old-world charm preserved and intact? Or does the average small time person chase greater things in life like spending time with family than chase materialistic pleasures like a hefty pay hike, the next foreign trip, the next modern car etc. Sometimes I wonder if our generation ever got its priorities right. Most of us leave our homes and stay away from parents and are often not with them on regular days when they would need us. Instead, we are chasing our dreams and trying to stand on our own so that one day, we will be able to suffice for what may come. In the process, we end up staying apart for most of the time in order to be able to support when in future we stay together. Blessed are those who do not have to leave their parents or homes.

The other day I was watching a movie and there was a scene where some foreigners were being taken through ‘Dharavi’ (Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai), and were being given the tour of homes inside the slums in exchange of money. This is a legitimate business where the tourist is curious to see how the slum folks stay and are genuinely willing to pay money to get a glimpse of it. I now think of it, we are moving one step back (or front depending on the way you view it) and getting ourselves familiarized with our rural eco system. With the fad on farming increasingly getting popular in cities, people are now opting for a village-like living on weekends in the garb of adventure. The day is not far when we will re-connect with our rural counterparts and get amazed at how simple living can cure most of our technology inflicted urban stress. I often wonder if I should move back to a small town set-up and start living a more meaningful life where valuing the other person’s life and giving him/her the required time is going to matter more than earning quick bucks at the cost of time. I also wonder that whenever my baby is born, I would want to give her/him a taste of how the world looked like in the absence of technology – when writing letters had its own charm, power cuts in the evening signaled time to play out with other kids with no dearth of open spaces to play and not having to book a court using an app.

But I then back out. For it is time for my only free 2-hours-per-week-to-do-things-i-want-to to end, I have plethora of excel sheets to analyse and prepare a weekly report to be presented to my boss the next day, which would position me good in my professional equation at work & augur well for my incumbent appraisals which would then make me earn extra bucks every month, help me go to Europe for vacations, buy insurance for myself and my family and what all and what not.

Sorry Anna Hazare, this new year I let you down.

Hello folks,

Disclaimer: I swear by Arindham Chaudhary’s literary skills that I won’t talk about my job, given the fact that I crib about it almost every day on facebook.

Okay I know I am 22 days late but as they say better late than never and since this is my first post in the new year so Happy New Year people.

One thing that amazes me about New Years is the way people make a lot of hue and cry about the New Year resolutions and then with most of them (Me included) it fades away in no time. You can attribute various reasons to it but I ‘m sure you would have never heard of what follows:

Of how my new year resolution parted ways with me even before the sun of 1^st of January could rise.

First let me tell you what it was all about. Okay we all saw Anna Hazare’s antics the previous year and though I do not totally abide by what he preaches but somewhere within me it did raise questions of contributing my bit to remove corruption from the day to day incidents that I face and so, wearing the metaphorical  “Anna Topi”, I vowed never to bribe anyone for whatsoever reasons.

Act 1 Scene 1, 31^st December Night, Chandigarh

After yet another hectic day out in the field in Jalandhar (no not the paddy fields ofcourse), I set out to go to Chandigarh to meet other friends and to be in some company while embracing the new year. It was while I was on my way to Chandigarh, sitting in the erratic Punjab Transport bus going through the bumpier-than-Vidya-Balan’s-body road, that the Anna in me spawned and hence I too had a NYR (Read: New Year Resolution).

After reaching Chandigarh and after meeting  my long lost friends  we had an uninterrupted bashing session which comprised of bash-your-boss and bash-your-job and praise-the-other-guy’s-job-grass-on-the-other-side-greener session for close to an hour and then started the usual booze session. With my pace that night I knew I was up for something really big. I disclosed my NYR with others and they mocked at me and my NYR as if I had told them that my favourite actor in the whole world was Tusshar Kapoor. While others had just got a hang of the booze, I was already on another world by then but still consistent at my pace just like Vinay Kumar’s bowling. At that time I mentioned my NYR again, still not sure if I could actually convey what I wanted to, given the state I was in. At that moment,  we decided to go for a drive in a friend’s car inspite of being alerted by a phattu-friend that it is Chandigarh and full of Police checkposts at night (yes, we guys have this stupid ego of teasing the ghost).

Act 1 Scene 2, Driving through Chandigarh.

We could see a check-post at a distance from inside the car and at that very instance, the song Sadi Gali  started playing. I had carried my bottle inside the car and by then was as normal as Rakhi Sawant is in her interviews. Seeing this, one bastard of a friend threw a gauntlet at me challenging me to get down  of the car when we get close to the check post, show some newly learnt Punjabi dance moves and tease the policemen and come back.

Men will be men.

I was no less a man. Seriously. Question of my ego. I grabbed the challenge with both hands as any batsman in the world does when Sreesanth comes to bowl. The car neared the post. I got down. Went a step ahead. Showed my Bhangra Moves and just when the policeman threw his danda @ me, ran back to the car which had already taken a u-turn by then and got into it thereby showing a middle finger to the policeman(still don’t know why) and we got back, me feeling proud of my achievement and others hilariously laughing.

As we were going from a god-only-knows road, we saw another check-post at a distance.

Instantly and unanimously it was understood that we had to do the same act here too.

Now I hate Marconi, yes the Italian son of a bitch who invented wireless.

We were unaware of the fact the the drama at the previous checkpost had led to the policemen transmitting the message at every other posts alerting them of the colour,make and number of our car.

But by that time, I was as lost from my senses as Mayawati is in the parliament. I took it as an unsaid responsibility on me to repeat my act and just as we could get close to the post, we played Sadi Gali again (Somehow this song just pumps up my dance hormones or should I say used to pump up). I got down. Went ahead, this time a bit more ahead without realizing and started my antics. Before I could understand, there were policemen running from all directions towards me. I ran towards the car which was running ahead of me (buggers realized that it was a trap and were leaving me and running away).

All of us got caught. 

After a slur of MC and BC used as salutation purposes to refer to us, we (being the sales guys we are, oh sorry somewhere I had to mention my profession), taken to the police chowki and on the verge of getting behind the bars, somehow managed to convince the cops by bribing the eight of them a sum of 20 grands.

Half of which had to be shelled out by me, partly because no one else had that much then and partly because I was playing the protagonist.

We returned back home and no one spoke a word again about mine or any goddamn NYR.

I feel sorry for my younger brother who will have to wait for yet another month to get his new handset.

Last but not the least, I am sorry to you, Anna Hazare for letting you down.

P.S: The above narrated incident is a figment of my imagination and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely co-incidental. I also want to use this very occasion to claim that I have been abstaining myself from alcohol and that actually is my NYR.

An Open Letter to Shahid Afridi

Hello Mr. Afridi,

Your recent comments corroborating an insane claim regarding Sachin Tendulkar confirms your desperation to bring attention on to yourself. I am also intrigued by the fact that even after knowing the fact that every time you open your mouth (be it in front of the media or in the presentation ceremony), you leave no stone unturned to make a mockery of yourself, still you go on raising up that bar of shamelessness time and again….In fact with your latest antics, you have left me puzzled as to who between the two of you, (Yes You dumbfuck) and Shoaib Akhtar, is the more shameless one or is it like both of you sat together and decided that “lets explore new avenues of self-mockery now that our cricket seems to have seen its end”….Oh I’m so sorry you guys can’t converse in such chaste English…my bad.

Seems like both of you have taken a bet on who is dumber of the two of you. My sympathies are with Shoaib Akhtar and please convey it to him the next time you meet him for to me he is a retard on whom Allah hasn’t bestowed upon  a brain to think…and it’s a fact he himself has proven to the whole world on many occasions..so I refrain from commenting on it and will go by the lines of Shoaib Malik…that “When his own family does not take him seriously, why should others”

Coming back to you…yes you never seemed to be the bad-mouthed moron until now when you chose to go down the Akhtar way.

   Well, I have vowed to myself not to talk to you presenting statistics and that is primarily for 2 reasons:

1.                Your immature, uneducated brain will find it too hard to understand it

2.               You won’t even get a rat’s ass to hide your face if I do a comparision between your’s and Sachin’s statistics

So I prescribe go and talk to Abdul Qadir…I have heard in your initial days you tried to model yourself upon him….Go ask him about the stature of Tendulkar….he would tell you how after a provocation that he had once made to Tendulkar…he got hammered all round the park….28 runs in an over….that being Sachin’s debut series. Go ask Wasim Akram what had he uttered when Abdul Razzaq dropped Tendulkar during the 2003 World Cup match….he had said,”Bh*****d tujhe pata bhi hai tune kiska catch choda hai”……such is his stature. In our country he is worshipped no less than a God and why only our country…the world around, I shall lay down a couple of instances of what people have had to say about him you pugnacious-nonsensical-shithole:

Mathew Hayden (during his tour to India in 1998),”I have seen God, he bats for India at number 4 in Tests”

Hashim Amla (who supposedly has a fear of flights and once after a flight in which both the Indian & South African team were travelling together, he was asked by a journalist as to how was he feeling, he replied),”I felt alright. After all we had the God travelling with us”

I know these things are difficult for you to understand for in the culture that you have been brought up, bitching and fighting with others is the order of the day. It seems that the only picture you have in your bedroom is that of Tendulkar….I suggest you remove it..for its maligning the sanctity of the picture to be there in the home of a beard-scratching-psycho like you.

To remind you of your own antics…you have taken 2 temporary retirements from cricket…..now what under the sun is this temporary retirement will you please explain….you rat-fucking-bastard....The state of affairs of cricket in your nation makes it seem to be like some kind of a reality show. Trust me even our Rakhi Sawant is more consistent in her opinions than the decisions of your cricket board. You seem to be possessing a very weak memory….It seems you have forgotten how after a comment of yours about the fragile physique of Irfan Pathan saying it was unlike that of a real Pathan…he kept rattling your stumps whenever you came to bat….you forgot how Gautam Gambhir,once, gave you a piece of his mind in a completely Dilli-Style post which you never ever dared him…You forgot how Sehwag has made your whole team look like a bunch of jokers on the field..every time we play a test match or On every world cup when both our teams have played against each other, how Tendulkar has clinically overwhelmed your whole nation.

What have you done for your country or for the game of cricket….except may be giving that statue-of-liberty kind of pose (hands making a V and legs making an inverted V) whenever you take a catch or a wicket…Even on that front we have surpassed you…I suggest you take lessons from Virat Kohli-the official swearer of our team…and he will teach you the latest swears he has caught up on the roads of Delhi…and show you how to use them whenever you take a catch…believe me he looks much more macho and stylish than you do.

So next time, even in your wildest imaginations, do not consider giving your fart-like opinions about legends like Tendulkar and Dravid even if it is to generate publicity of a retard like Akhtar…for that will earn you the wrath of your own countrymen (let alone others) and will stamp your forehead with a             

 “I am a brainless piece of shit” placard.

And next time please take lessons from Rameez Raja on how to speak English and pronounce it well…or better not try talking in English at all…else the next time you travel to England…some English loving soul will kill you alleging that you, with your English speaking attempts, were conspiring to come up with a Baluchistani dialect of English.

Yours Truly

An avid cricket lover 

Memories of a night

The sun had gone down giving twilight its way…the birds were flying back post a tire-some day. I was returning home after an overdose of play, tired and tottered in my own thoughts, I chose to take the shorter and more obscure route to home this time.

Trudging down the railway tracks filled me with a weird sense of joy and after all trains and its entire paraphernalia form a part of a child’s memories atleast back here in India. But there was one thing that I have always hated in life…so much so that till date I have never come to terms with it….An eerie silence and an unnatural loneliness.

Nevertheless, the thought that the station lay ahead, made me take the road less travelled.

On my way I saw a dog walking on the tracks along side me…Not minding it at all and considering it as a company I chose to walk with even more aplomb…..and suddenly the signal on the post ahead changed….this re-arranged the railway tracks and the dog’s leg got stuck between the two. To our (mine and the dog’s) dismay the change in the signal was for a train to pass and within no time both of us saw a train approaching us with full vigour. The dog was helplessly pushing itself trying to get its feet out and when it failed consistently, it submitted itself to me. Now the creature was helplessly looking at me and something in the nature told the dog that I was the bigger and the smarter creature around and so I could save it. I tried everything under me to help him take his feet out…even shouted for help but nothing would change the fate that had already been written for the dog…The train came closer and closer and the dog was looking at me for mercy….I tried the last time to no result and then had to move back to save myself…..The train blew the thing away into pieces!!!!!

The train had passed but the sound of the horn still reverberated in my ears and the smoke was still visible even from a considerable distance.

I did not have the guts to look back and was startled in fact bemused and stunned at the way the things unfolded before me….Although it was a dog but had been my companion even for a couple of minutes and after all I had seen a death….and the fact that hit me even more harder was how we human beings become a victim to our own desires and how at times we are as helpless as other creatures around.

I mustered some courage and held my posture back and started walking…this time faster to reach the station so as to counter the thoughts with people around. But I could hear faint footsteps walking alongside me. I dare not look anywhere but straight and walked even faster…..The sound of the footsteps became even stronger and I had no choice but to look towards my right……It was the same dog who had been walking along side me……

I was surprised to see the dog again especially after having seen it being brittled into pieces in front of my own eyes.

In all this confusion I never realized that I had myself been walking on the tracks this time and when I did realize, the signal on the post had already changed to make way for another passing-by train, thereby re-arranging the tracks and locking my feet this time.

The train was nearing me with all its speed and I was doing everything under the sun to pull the feet out….The dog was looking at me and I was numb now….knowing that death was certain…I didn’t know what to do….The train was within a few metres now….and the dog moved back…..I closed my eyes….and it was complete darkness thereof……The last thing I could remember was how the train thrust itself upon me.

I opened my eyes and it was still dark…..I wanted to know whether it was hell or heaven……None: was the realization. I was still in my own world….on my own bed.

Never realized why this weird dream happened to me…..first the dog undergoing a sequence of events only to realize that I too will undergo the events in the same fashion…may be to highlight the value of life and the way we spend it.

Nevertheless it was a chilly winter night and I preferred to think less and continue my tryst with my sleep.

P.S: The above mentioned account bears resemblance to a piece that I had read somewhere and happened to me a few days back in my dream….So today while deciding what to blog on, I took this as a matter. Writing everything according to what I had read somewhere loooong back (forgotten where) and it was in my subconscious mind and so re-appeared as a night-mare a couple of days back.

Life and Times of a Management Trainee in Sales & Marketing

Hello ppl,

Well it has been over 5 months since I passed out of college and joined my company as a Management Trainee in a Sales and Marketing role for a home grown FMCG.

I would like to highlight the life of an “MT” with the help of a conversation held with a few of my friends.

Before that, I would like to mention that the following conversation is totally a figment of my imagination and though some parts of it are true..most of it is imaginary and though confirms to reality deals with no one in particular as such.

Let me introduce you to the characters of the conversation:

Gogo: That’s me and I am employed with a FMCG in Sales and Marketing, currently undergoing a stint @ Mysore and whenever time permits…and even when it doesn’t, I rush to Bangalore.

Bodo: The character is employed with a B2B marketing firm in Bangalore.

Vikiya: A character employed with a leading IT firm in the role of Finance..oops IT..oops..Consulting may be… in Bangalore.

Kapoor:  A character employed with a telecom major in the field of marketing in Bangalore.

Karan: A character who has passed out from the same b-school as the above but has opted out of placements to start his own firm in Bangalore.

One important convention for the most integral expletives :

‘#’refers to Bhen%^od

‘G’: G#$nd

So here it goes:

As usual, Gogo rushes off to Bangalore whenever possible and even though his job requires him to work 6 days a week, he has done some “setting” with his depot manager @ Mysore (finally showing some management skills) and takes an off on every Saturday to rush to Blore.

The context is post one such booze sessions that all of these have had:

Gogo: # saala life kya ho gya hai #...# depot mein 5 din G ghisne ke baad # kuch mann hi nahi karta hai karne ko.

Bodo: (With half his eyes closed and trying everything under the sun to open them) # G mara gaya hai #...kya karein saala…ajeeb ho gaya hai life #

Gogo: Saala u r atleast blessed to be in Blore…mera soch # Mysore mein..# kya bhaasha bolte hain # kuch samajh nahi aata…aur phir bhi kaam karna padta hai…# PG mein reh raha hoon #..room mate ka chehra dekhte hi KLPD ho jata hai…maa kasam..kya din aa gaye hain

Bodo: Abe office ka kya scene hai…koi bandi pata le…time pass ho jayega

Gogo: # bandi ka naam mat le…1 hi bandi hai office mein..# naam hai “Chandra Kala”…# jaisa naam waise lakshan…# frustration ki seema paar ho gayi hai

Bodo: # sahi mein…kya soch ke Marketing kiye the…saala yeh din dekhna padega….# pata hai..college ne bigaad diya saala..JLT karwa karwa ke…kutta bana diya…saala college mein hi aisa hona chahiye tha humare saath…# tab akal aati..# din mein 1 time khaana cancel karwate…aur roz shaheed nagar ka chakkar lagwana chahiye tha…# tab pata chalta Sales kya cheez hai…

Gogo: # tu yeh sab chod..mere dad tto bolte hain..kyun itna padha likha..jab bada ho ke..ghoom ghoom kar sabun tel bechna hi tha

Kapoor Interrupts,,,: To gogo: # tu kam se kam FMCG mein hai…tera future bright hai.

Bodo: # mera bhi yahi haal hai…saala..dar badar ki thokre kha kar..ghar lautna padta hai..baar baar yehi khayal aata hai..ki saala aaraam wala job chun lena chahiye tha…# G mara raha hoon main yahan par…sab ajeeb lag raha hai

Vikiya in the mean while…has given no shit to the conversation and is in his own world.

Gogo to Vikiya: abe tera kya scene hai…describe ur day in the office…

Vikiya: Kuch nahi #..koi kaam nahi hai mera..10 baje uthte hain..11 baje tak office..phir sutta maarne nikalte hain..phir thoda random net surf karte hain…phir lunch…phir sochte hain kya kiya jaye…isi tarah time pass karte hain…aur 4-5 bajte hi office se nikal jate hain.

(Ladies and Gentlemen…FYI Vikiya earns atleast 30 grands more than what Bodo or Gogo earn per month)

Hearing this..Gogo goes berserk

Gogo: # vikiya…#..koi openings hain kya teri company mein

Kapoor: # Gogo..IT mein kaam karega…kuch tto sharam kar

Bodo: # Life ajeeb ho gaya hai kuch nahi samajh aa raha..kabhi kabhi lagta hai..# Karan ya Shenai kitne khush hain…life apne terms pe jee rahe hain…# mereko bhi aisi life jeena hai..# Gogo..kuch ghapla karte hain be..Land scams etc etc..aur paisa kama ke kuch dhandha shuru karte hain be

Gogo: haan be…frustrate ho gya hoon #..depot stint ke name pe Mysore bhej diya hai…# lunch mein 6 rs ki thali khata hoon…dinner ka pata nahi….aur # har din 20 baar Kannada Gothilla bolna padta hai….# the other day sumbody asked me my name…and I replied..Kannada Gothilla

Karan: Guys..I offer you equity in my firm…come and join me…lets do sumthing…

Gogo: # I wish I had a cushion in my life the way u have…# I assure..I would have resigned this very moment…

Kapoor: # gogo…tera future to bright hai…tu FMCG mein hai

Bodo: # sab materialistic hai bhai….sab kuch…mereko yeh kaam nahi karna bhai..koi bacha lo…# kal  Monday hai…phir se wohi kuttagiri shuru

Gogo: # chup kar..abhi 2 baj rahe hain…mujhe subah 6 baje ki train pakad ke Mysore jana hai..# kutta ban gaya hoon

Kapoor: Gogo..tu kyun tension le raha hai…Tu FMCG mein hai…tera future bright hai..

Gogo: Maa behen ek kar doonga…phir se kisine yeh sentence bola tto…# jise apna dukhda sunao…ek hi baat bolta hai..”Tu FMCG mein hai…tension math le”…# kya mazaak hai.

By this time.Vikiya and Karan have slept already…and others also doze off..leaving Gogo wondering..whether he should actually get up @ 6 in the morning to catch his train to Mysore.

Beyond the last blue mountain

hi friends,

Beyond the last blue mountain

Sometimes it is too difficult and sometimes completely worthless

Still with a ray of hope..he decides to keep giving it a try

Turning and twisting till a thought strikes him, leaving him spell bound
 “Who the fuck wants to sleep when I can see you with my eyes wide open”

A flicker of an eyelid back, he used to own her, playing a pauper to his princess

In no time, the joy of being around has been superseded by a world full of responsibilities

With a quest to find herself, things have taken a different turn this time around

Will it matter then when she loses him having herself found

It was characteristic of him to keep fighting and keep chasing his dreams

After all he had dreamt an entire paradise out of their lives

But the cracks were too immense to resurrect with the glimmer of hope gone

Accepting his fate, he set out on a different journey altogether

Still at times he finds the wind blowing the other way

Reminiscent of memories from the past

Making him long things that won’t ever last

And then it becomes unbearably tough to bear the pain

Because he has seen what lies beyond the last blue mountain.

Cheers

Nishit

Quizzing : My First Love

Hello all,

Yah it has been a long long break since I last posted something…and in the mean while a lot of things happened…a lot of things changed..I became a post-graduate…left my college and the 2 most awesome years of my life behind..and here I am a couple of weeks away from stepping into the corporate world..which shall be my second act into it.

Today I shall talk about Quizzing, practically the only religion that I follow. For everyone of us there is something that excites us, inspires us, keeps us going…at various stages of life we have something that plays that role for us in our lives….as a kid a bar of chocolate plays the role…as a teenager…sports play that role…Quizzing has played that role for me ever since I dived into the fascinating & unending world of Quzizing.

I owe it greatly to my school (St. Mary’s Convent School, Jharsuguda) and more specifically to my G.K Teacher in standard-7, Mr. Asit Panigrahi for it was he who introduced me into the world of quizzing. He used to discuss current affairs with me every day and that propelled into me a habit of reading a Newspaper every day. The privilege of having a half an hour chat with him was enough of a motivation to keep me going. Soon I started loving it. The 2^nd most important thing to have happened to me at that age was that one day I was just flipping the channels of my TV and suddenly spotted a Quiz show being hosted in one of the channels…I watched the complete show and to my utter surprise, I knew the answers to most of the questions..From that day onwards, Mr. Derek O Brien became my role model…and Bournvita Qujz Contest became my ulterior motive.

Then one day, a strange thing happened..NIIT came to our school to select a team for some inter-school Quiz Competition that they were to organize. It was then that I realized how many more such kids were there like me..who wanted to participate…the competition was intense..They first conducted a written G.K test to select 12 people..and randomly formed 6 teams of 2 each. The team winning the quiz that was to be followed, was to represent the school for the inter-school thing. I was delighted to be in one of the teams. But we lost the quiz that followed. We came runners-up. Ofcourse we got a pat on our backs for coming this far and a round of applause from the crowd. That was not to satiate me. As finalists of the intra-school quiz, we received invites for the inter-school quiz that was to be conducted. I, very religiously, went to the venue as if we were going to be one of the teams on stage. I chose the first row in the audience to park myself and was waiting for the action to begin…with a hope that I am not going to leave any question that passes to the audience. Destiny had it that, one of the teams coming from a nearby town could not make it to the venue for some reason. The organisors were in a fix as to what to do now. I don’t know what struck me. I got up and went and spoke to the Quizmaster and requested him, literally begged him to allow me to fill that missing team’s gap. They could have gone ahead with one team less but the desperation on my face moved the quizmaster. He asked me if I has a team-mate with me, I replied saying Yes (though I still had to figure out who that team-mate would be). Then he okayed my idea. I rushed into the audience segment and requested a guy from my school to become my team mate. After a lot of convincing, the guy agreed.

I remember each and every moment of that quiz. I was overjoyed. We won that quiz by a huge margin, thumping a tough team which was tipped as a favourite. The audience gave us a standing ovation when the quiz master revealed how we had made it into the stage. The Quiz master then came and hugged me…and surprised by my zeal and passion, whispered something to me..which I can never forget..”Keep Walking” were the words he said.

That was my first win in Quizzing...those days I used to have a bi-cycle..Only I know how speedily I rode the bicycle back home to show the cup that I had won to my parents.

That day onwards, it was no looking back for me. Quizzing, in a way, has become the motive of my life. I owe so much to Quizzing. It taught me to face my ecstasies and agonies alike..taught me to deal with the intense competitive world out there…and more importantly became a facet of my life.

Since that day I have kept walking…religiously, honestly and passionately…and even till date the sight of a question mark excites, inspires and keeps me going.

Adieu for now

Capt Krunch a.k.a Nishit