Remebrance of Things- Past, Present and Future

I sit here and listen to Aerosmith, wait now its Stillwater and Audioslave, after a marathom weekend of writing, yep. I was given The Ultimate Assignment (it had 42 pages in all), and even copying that takes a lot of time. So much so, that the winamp MP3 list had gone through quite a few songs . Well Im not here to talk about that (though, i just did). My thoughts after finishing the work;"The Bastard has beeen nailed", words of Edmund Hillary to Tenzing Norgay after conquering the Everest.

Anyways, today was a time for reflection, as the musings continued in my twisted head. I recalled some of the things that i did in college, of course there were others, which were more illicit and spicy, but they shall be posted some other day and time. Today is all about my years in 'The Village', a not-so-affectionate title for college.

The Early Days
College for me was a whole new ball game for the first few days, I knew of only one form of education & teaching. Where uneducated teachers come and bark their lectures at unattentive students whose only aim in life is to.... (well, think of something). Fundamentally, the first half remains till today while the second half changed when i joined college. Here I was, A mama's boy still, thrust into the land of the toppers, the CAT champs, the perfect GRE scores, the 3 job holderrs, and most remarkably, the Beer Guzzlers, chain smoking potheads. Not that they ran the show or something, they were the ones who get all the attention somehow. So i cleaned a couple of rooms and did some ragging stuff to get to know the DUDES of the college, and did a fairly decent job, may i add. Then ofcourse, the bunking started, while people used to bunk to go out with their beloved, to sit in the canteen, to smoke up or to do nothing. However, for me and the likes, it always meant cricket or basketball all day long.

During one such game with the 'village boys' (yes, this is true, it was a all village team and we had a bet), as i was bowling the last over, this senior came and gave us a little rollicking, saying that he needed a 'Crowd' for a event and we fucchas were out playing. After the usual mumbo-jumbo and a few jitters, my team scraped through with a few runs and off we went to the event. As luck would have it, it was a lonewolf quiz. The elims from sports turned out to be crackable and I somehow ended up in the finals, albeit after 5 tie-breaker questions. I held my own despite the constant banter and ragging threats from the seniors in the audience and above all, the host himself :) . I finished a decent fourth out of six, considering that was my first quiz as a finalist (Didn't quiz at all in school, barring a couple of events as audience) and the GODS themselves had all qualified. The gods later on opened up and I got to be their partner, and above all, am still good friends with all of them.

The Transit
This result suddenly made me believe that i was decent enough and could quiz a bit. This spurred me on to compete more and get more good questions. Then ofcourse, 'An Offer was made which i Couldn't resist'. A senior, who i considered to be a divine person, asked me to team up with him. First of all, I couldn't believe that i had such a offer, and secondly, with power came the responsibility. So I knew I had to hold my end for us to do well as a team. And boy o boy, well we did. We swept the first few quizzes with astonishing margins, then ofcourse there was the odd heated word and we sat as different teams, didn't do either one any good, IMHO. The juggernaut rolled on and on and we ended up winning most things in the college circuit. Sadly, his CAT preparation slowed him down and meant lesser number of quizzes, otherwise, it would have been even more fun.

And in the month of september 2003, the greatest thing of all greatest things happened. HT Horizons used to do a quiz called ICE-Breakers, which ran for only 2 editions, won once by NSIT with the incomperable (he is that, undeniably) Rohan. I didn't know its that big a deal, so I had asked The Invincible and Legendary Debashree to team up with me for a few quizzes that she and i would show up for. DID we win? You bet. This story looks like a fairytale out of children's lit. and for me it still is. The underdog won. And I didn't know the accolades and the what-nots that came with it. Chuck the prizes for a second, as hard as it maybe to do this, I was in the HT supplements twice and enjoyed pop (Read: Rock) star status for a couple of weeks. Here I was, a newbee to the hostel life, and soon people who I never knew would walk upto me and shake hands with me. It felt good,& still does. And we finished third in the IIT open quiz, 'Kombat', one of the best results that i have achieved considering we were the best all college team on stage. . University Challenge had just happened for the first time in India, that did also help, considering the publicity and the free food and all that came with it. Sadly, we didn't do too well in UC, losing in the quarters that year and the most unceremonious exit known to quizkind, a first round elimination the following year.

Yeah, I did carry on quizzing, but somehow the charm went out, with quizzards in the so-called delhi circuit increasingly becoming reminiscent of mercenaries. And we won more, for the college and ourselves, but somehow the whole thing turned into a futile mechanical exercise, rather than the intellectual activity that it is & supposedly believed to be.

Ofcourse, there were other things to do in college like basketball, volleyball, the odd game of bulls-n-bearz. the JAMs that were so enjoyable. But these remained intra activities while quizzing was more mainstream and more competitive. I will miss em all, just played my last competiticve game of basketball, ended up losing by 3 points, in a 103 point thriller. And tommorrow is the last volleyball game, sadly, memories is all that will remain. And fond memories they shall be....