Home Coming

Ok so finally I get the time to write about my last quiz. The quiz that I conducted in my second home, Scindia, the place where I spent the formative years of my life. That’s where I conducted my last quiz. I am an Ex-Scindian and I’ve been conducting the Platinum Jubilee Memorial Quiz(or Plat as it is fondly called) for 3 years now.

Just 6 years ago I was on the other side of the table (for the record I came second) In the three years that I have been a quizmaster for this quiz, Scindia has won it once, in 2010. Today, I am more interested in talking about why I feel nervous before taking the stage for Plat, every time. (The review for the quiz can be found here) Is it because emotions always take a front seat whenever I go back to my alma mater? Or is it just a figment of my imagination? Or is it because the burden of expectations in a familiar setting is a lot more?

The concern comes from the fact that in my brief history of 2 years of being a quizmaster, in the last year or so (at least) I have never trembled when on stage. But in Scindia, the night before the quiz I had a difficult time. So was the case in 2009 & 2010 Plat. That uneasiness and restlessness just wouldn’t go. I could hardly sleep. And even in the morning when I was getting ready I was shivering, for no reason. The only comforting factor was when Ma’am Bishnoi (my English teacher from school- one of the few teachers still in Scindia from my time) came and made tea for me and when Mr. Ramesh Sharma (the band teacher) tied the tie for me, a simple task I just couldn’t pull off (thank you, shaky hands).

Ok the quiz began and for the first ten minutes I ran out of jokes. They-just-wouldn’t-come-to-me. I started pathetically (I missed the introduction of teams!!), but after about 10 odd minutes I approached the flow(As Tony Hsieh says in Delivering Happiness). The teams were comfortable, so were I and the audience. As I keep saying, one of the bigger determinants of the success of a quiz is NOT how the participants perceived it, but how the audience thinks it is. Being a showman working towards the feedback effect is what I strive for; it just brings out the best in me. The greater the feedback the better the performance, the better the performance the greater the feedback. Repeat.

The obvious answer I think is the fact that there’s a huge emotional connect I have with Scindia. The friends, the teachers, the pride in being a Scindian, the daily routine set according to the Astachal and the byes after every meal as if it’s the last time we’re meeting, amongst other priceless memories weigh heavily on me. The aatma of Scindia is what I’m talking. The fact that I spend 2 extra days before the quiz every year in school in its usual form, unlike the noise of the Founder’s day, adds to the tension. But will I trade off those emotionally drenching two days for those 10 minutes of solid start? I don’t think so.

Thank god I only ask the questions!!

MCGS, Ajmer Quizzing Workshop

Deshan and I conducted a quiz workshop last weekend in MCGS, Ajmer. This post is not a report/review of the same (you will find that here) but I just wanted to talk about my experience and a few learnings.
Starting with the experience, one word.. Fantastic. The workshop, atleast from our end, was awesome. And going by the reactions posted on the facebook wall that we created in the workshop, we did fairly well. Before reaching MCGS I did have some vague memories of the last time I was there, for IPSC Cultural Fest. 8 years ago. Spending three days in that campus just refreshed all those memories (Himanshu if you ever read this, recall the Hidamba incident)
Moving on, the fact that we customized the workshop to a great extent coupled with a lot of real time exercises meant that we slept for close to 10 hours in 72 hours. It was crazy but it was fun. And all that definitely wouldn't have been possible without Abhiram, Abhishek and Po.

Now to certain learnings which we noted down while on our way back. I won't keep it quizzing workshop specific but I hope it would make sense for anyone dealing with kids:

• Be informal but be authoritative




• Give them opportunities to practice skills/learnings/whatever it is that you are doing




• It is difficult for kids to be mentally present for a long time at a stretch so provide them with avenues to distract their mind. Being a facilitator of distractions helps you when you really want them to pay attention.




• When preparing for the workshop keep in mind that more than just imparting those skills that you intend to, you also have to create an experience for them.




• For every activity/game/exercise/speech ask why you are doing this and what do you wish to achieve for your participants at the end of it.




• Customize it for your participants. Every school may have similar demographic characteristics but they have different psychographic characteristics. Interacting with them in the earlier stages of the workshop really helps. Activities and talks related to a lot of real time incidents create a much greater impact. More than just being challenging it also kills boredom emanating from being repetitive.




• Even if you're doing a workshop for a very traditional art form- use technology. Being as non-techie as a non-techie can be, mark my words. Use technology.




• Ensure what you communicate has been received well. DO NOT ASSUME.




• When planning activities think of activities that are inclusive. Appreciate everyones hardwork and unless facing time constraints, give them an opportunity to present their skills in front of the gathering. Apologise if you're unable to do so.




• And finally, Expect the best. Prepare for the worst.

Well that's it for now. Keep Quizzing!

Why quizzing does what it does to me

I might be the only loser blogger who's been blogging for three years without anybody else having read his blog. But that's ok I've found a corner for me to sulk I'll go there after I'm done with this blogpost.
Now today's post as the the headline says is why am I hooked to quizzing and what keeps me hooked. I'll start with some incidents I remember and will always remember till the rest of my life.

• Incident 1-

When I was in Grade 5 or 6 in Sommeville School, Noida we had a weekly SUPW period where you could choose one hobby out of quizzing, craft, dancing, music etc. I chose quizzing. So our teacher Mrs. Batra used to come up with interesting questions every week and also asked us students to prepare 5 odd questions, which we asked in the class. I don't know if it was an effective way of keeping all of us engaged but I for one was engaged in this manner. I used to go back home every thursday(that's when the class happened) and would start preparing the questions for the next week's class. Why? Maybe I was born for quizzing. Coming back to the incident, at the end of the class Mrs. Batra used to take a 15 Question test for us. In one of these tests she asked a question - 'Which car manufacturing giant's name means People's Car'? (Mind you we were in grade 5/6) The correct answer just for the record was Volkswagon. I was the only one who got it right. Mrs. Batra and my fellow students were amazed but thats not the point I want to make here. I wanna talk about how I knew the answer. In those days TOI's Delhi Times had one page that was called Folks Wagon- which talked about nonebrities (Page 3 type people who weren't actually celebs) The question said People's Car and I could connect the dots People's Car-People's Wagon- Folks Wagon- aha!- Volkswagon. That connection was a you-had-me-at-the-hello moment with quizzing for me.

• Incident 2-

Fast forward to late 2000s. College 2nd year. I along with my partner Mayank Purohit went to an East-Delhi College Maharaja Agarsen for a business quiz. We thought it'll be easy money since we did not expect good quizzers to turn up, that is exactly waht happened. No good quizzing team but us. So we were sure to go back with deeper pockets and boosted ego. So the quiz started and as expected we were the highest scoring team to qualify beating the second best team with a comfortable margin. The final started and we were kept on tenterhooks by an unknown team. After the penultimate round we were ahead by a slender margin of 5 points, which made us a little uncomfortable. The final round was a Rapid Fire 6 questions 30 seconds type. I don't like rapid fire. I may have an unskewed win-loss ratio but still. The round started and we were the first team to go for the rapid fire. The Quizmistress started and without seeking Mayank's help I gave out all the answers. All 6. It was like I knew what the next question will be. Like I had lived that moment before. Like they say in sports - the striker knew where he will receive the ball so he positioned himself accordingly and his support also knew where the striker will position himself so it seemed as if they had lived that movement before (Example: the 98 all star finals which Jordan's team won- just find its video or report you will love it- Those are the kinds of moments you live for as a sportsman) It was a similar moment for me. My mind and tongue worked in a superfluous manner. And when I gave that 6th answer -Vodka- the Quizmistress went -Fuck. She didn't say it loudly just her lips moved. Like me she too was in awe of me. And my partner Mayank- who I hadn't bothered confirming the answers with- went berserk.

There are more such stories I will keep updating over time.

Thank You Danny Meyer



 This little blogpost is inspired by Danny Meyer's Setting the Table. Thus, thank you Danny Meyer.
I found a very interesting paragraph in which I find a lot of similarities. So I'll go sentence by sentence to convey what I wish to. Here goes-



You may think, as I once did, that I'm primarily in the business of serving good food. actually though, food is secondary to something that matters even more.


Similarly in quizzing- I once thought that the institution of quizzing is about knowledge. But according to what I've experienced (in terms of what I've been through) knowledge is secondary to something that matters even more.

In the end, what's most meaningful is creating positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human relationships. Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple and it's that hard.

That something is the experience- of the audience, of the paricipants and of the quizmaster. What's most meaningful is creating positive and uplifting outcomes and human relationships.

• Positive outcomes- That you take a lot of learnings back home with you




• Uplifting outcomes- Gives you a reason to remain enthusiastic about this institution




• Human relationships- Build a lifelong relationship with quizzing that you keep going back to it again and again. What I mean here is propagating quizzing in your community/institution not as a GK test(like mahaquizzer and world quizzing championships- precisely the reason why I was there for only one season, I'm sorry if you endorse it but WQC and Mahaquizzer are not quizzes) but as a meaningful experience which does all the above three.

And this goes for the QM also. Because at the end of the day it's the QM's responsibility with his flawless presentation(conduct+content+presentation format) to hold the audience and the participants' attention whilst giving them a reason to continue their association with this institution. It's that simple and it's that hard.

Puppetry Workshop

I attended a puppetry workshop last week with Abhiram at the Katkatha trust. From 5th to 12th June. An 8 day 10 hours a day intensive program. Well there were 9 adults from varied fields. 3 school teachers from Coimbatore, a film-maker, a theater professional, an NGO employee, a fresh graduate and 2 quizmasters (ya, that's us). Well our main trainer Anurupa Mem (that's what we fondly called her) was an Internationally acclaimed in India puppeteer (an internal puppet community joke)

Quizzing, from my side of the table, (quizmastering??) is an interesting way of presenting content. Similarly, puppetry is another interesting way to present content. While the former is a presentation of stories after stories (question after question) knit beautifully the latter is one class act. Now why am I talking about the two in one sentence, that's because I want to integrate the two. Seamlessly. How will I do it? I do have a vague idea but let's see if it actually clicks. But one thing I am quite sure of is that my first puppetry+quiz show will not happen before 2012, that's the amount of practice you need to do. (unless of course I leave everything else- quizzing, new media and football- to pursue puppetry only)

Now coming back to the workshop. We were initially taught the nuances(movement, anatomy etc.) of the Bunraku, the importance of which I realized over time. We then moved on to making puppets. Some chose Shadow puppets while the others chose Mouth puppets, we chose the latter (not because we are bad at drawing but because we suck at it). Making a mouth puppet took close to 5 days #firsttimers. And in the middle of all of this were adjusted a few puppet exercises, but its all about practice, practice and more practice. We, Abhiram and I, were also invited to attend puppetry jam sessions. Will give us a great platform to test ourselves.

PS: The only regret- the puppet didn't quite turn out to be that impressive, thanks to my stitching and visualising skills :(

Random Grumblings- How not to conduct a quiz

Ok so this one's a quiz review for a quiz that wasn't conducted by me but by somebody else. And I couldn't resist writing about it so yes here I am.

A quick preview of what follows and the kind of quiz it was: One word, shady.

Now to talk about it at length-

What: Delhi Leg of Exchange4media's, 3rd edition of Media Quotient.

Where: The Park, Parliament Street

When: 6th May

Who: Sponsors(as far as I can remember) Star News, Reebok, Timex, Sandisk.

So it was pretty evident that a lot of money was splurged on the event, as is the case generally with other for the media-of the media-by the media events. And in a media event of this magnitude one did not expect that the preparation level could reach such depths. To a certain extent I can understand that since these media guys wanted to focus on the media fraternity the QMs were from various media houses. Namely, Sudha Natarajan (Deputy CEO, Lintas) and Senjam Raj Sekhar (Head, CorpComm, Bharti). Well on the verge of being labelled sexist [yet again] I'd say the latter was by far the better of the two. But that does not mean he was good. If on a scale of Rebecca Black to Beatles, Ms. ji was Rebecca Black then Mr. ji was Justin Beiber. Their preparation was conspicuous by its absence. It seemed that the organisers told them in the morning to stop by at Park to conduct a quiz while on their way back home from work. That's not it, even the organisers [or the event management team so-to-say] wasn't too sure of how to conduct a successful quiz successfully the third time. I don't know how it was last year but what I do know is if the CMO of Star News calls this event successful then he really needs to see a couple of Tata Crucible episodes. This quiz was at par with the worst of Daulat Ram and Gargi college quizzes.

I'll just now move on to pointing out a few mistakes that the organisers (QMs included) made-

1. The most important thing in a quiz is a good quizmaster to keep the show alive and not murder it like Ms. Sudha and Mr. Quizzer-14-years-ago did. By that I mean, a good speaker is not sufficient enough to be considered as a good quizmaster. Also, from personal experiences I've seen certain bad speakers who turned out to be decent QMs.
2. If you still want to persist with these set of QMs, fine. The least you can do is give them a couple of days notice. It looks easy to be a QM but trust me its not. Just because you have a paper with Q and As in your hand does not mean that you will read through it without stammering/stuttering and people will love it.
3. I have lost count of the number of Quizmasters that I have seen who keep repeating the basic mistake of giving hints after a couple of teams have passed the question. These two were no different. Here comes the icing on the cake from last evening- teams raise your hands or clap or press the office boy buzzer instead of a proper electronic buzzer in a buzzer round, we have highly educated;) third umpires to spot the fastest hand raiser/clapper et al. I mean come on how ridiculous can you get.
4. The event management team- You can't have the spotlight right from the front at a height of 6ft. in an event where the performer has to interact with the audience. The spotlights need to be at least 12 ft to 15ft high. 6ft. makes sense when there is a fourth wall, say for example in theatre, but it's good to avoid it in any case {of course if the play demands it a manual spotlight can be lower} This made life difficult for the QMs as well as the participants. The QMs couldn't interact with the audience without having their palms outstretched to block the halogens harsh light falling straight on their face, while the participants couldn't see the LCD screens placed in front of them properly.
5. Again for the event managers- A quiz does not need 20 pretty girls in skirts to be conducted peacefully. It needs one good quizmaster. You can do without these girls. Unlike the IPL girls showing legs does not add to the Glamour Quotient of the Media Quotient. Plus if you're anyway spending so much money then why not get the best mathematicians to do the scoring. A certain Ms Shakuntala Devi will surely help. Jokes apart, how difficult is it to do scoring in multiples of 10 for six teams. Remember(strictly for a quiz)- the lesser the organisers the better the quiz turns out to be.
6. QMs- It does not help your humour in anyway to tell everyone if you are a neighbour of a participant or your doodhwala is the same. Just do your job. I've conducted a good number of quizzes and as a result share a healthy relationship with a few of these regulars. And as a rule when on stage I don't tell the others that I know some participant beforehand[however popular that participant be], just to avoid any sort of controversies that may arise due to allegations of favouritism[yes, been there faced that;)].

If an aspiring professional quizmaster is reading this or even somebody who's reading this wants to conduct a quiz(zes) in his/her club/school/college keep these points in mind.

Well that gives me a topic for my next post.

But I can't forget- do the coke brrrrrr instead of raising hands in the buzzer round. That was hil-wait-for-it-larious.

Till then,

Happy Quizzing!

Richie Rich: O$ama

We all know that OBL was a rich man, thanks to his inherited wealth, but how rich? And did he actually live like one. Let’s find out.

Born in 1957, OBL was 10 when he inherited $300 million, when his father Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden died in a helicopter crash, thus countering the myth that poverty breeds terrorists. Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was an illiterate dock worker in Yemen who saved enough money to start a construction company. Born in 1908, he emigrated to Saudi Arabia at a young age. In 1930, he began a construction company, and after coming to the attention of first monarch of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, he eventually achieved such success that his family became known as “the wealthiest non-royal family in the kingdom.” The company, now the Saudi Binladin Group, is worth in excess of $5 billion.

Well saying that Papa Laden was worth a ton of money, shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that he had to feed a huge number of mouths. Papa Laden had 22 wives who, combined, bore him at least 54 children. Osama himself was believed to be the 17th child overall, the only child of Mohammed bin Laden and his tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas.

Coming back to Li’l Osama, his exposure to radical Islam began after he shunned Western universities and studied at a university in Saudi Arabia, where he learned from Muslim preachers that following strict Islam was a defense against corruption and Western decadence. And with 1993 and 2001already under his belt the more he succeeded in killing, the more radical he became. He also started issuing fatwas, with the most infamous beingMuslims should kill Americans – including civilians – anywhere in the world.

And as the world absorbs the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, government warnings of counter strikes show that the death of one man won’t kill Al-Qaeda. One reason: the terrorist group doesn’t need bin Laden for money.

Contrary to popular opinion, the death of bin Laden does not strike a blow to the organization’s financial health. OBL did not support Al-Qaeda through a personal fortune or a network of businesses. He did not utilise his business resources for Al-Qaeda’s operations, they essentially lived hand to mouth.

How Al-Qaeda survives has kept the world’s top intelligence agencies in a pretty pickle. This game of swat-a-fly has changed the way global institutions function. Banks must now take responsibility for knowing who their customers are and also keep a strict eye on any unusual behaviour.

Though Bin Laden’s death is an important moral blow to Al-Qaeda, but is it an irrecoverable blow is yet to be seen.