Quizzing You Can Believe In!

Hyd Quiz Forum is where I took quizzing a serious business. That was a place where I’ve seen lot of  trivia based quizzes than you-know-it-or-you-don’t-know-it quizzes. I had done quite a lot of quizzes inside Infosys, and few outside.

Yesterday I had my first quiz at K-Circle, the oldest quizzing fraternity in Hyderabad. They are quizzing since 1972, and does weekly quizzes without fail every week. Since I’m living at the other part of the world where this quiz happens, I was never a regular there.

It was at their last open quiz happened in ISB when Devarajan Sir caught me ask asked me to do a quiz at K-Circle. Though I was not sure how he knew me, I happily accepted it, and did the quiz yesterday.

Had a deck of 70 questions. But thanks to AP Transco, I lost 30 minutes, and ended up doing 50. Probably I’ll do another set of 50 soon.

The turnout was decent, considering that BEQ happened on the same day, where in you’ll get free food, masala quiz, and costly prizes. There were a few friends who landed for the quiz. Nafee was particularly sad that she couldn’t come. She never seen me doing a quiz, since most of it happens inside the organization.

I’m sharing the deck, for those folks who ditched me for Derek, and those who couldn’t make it due to geographical constraints.

Download the Quiz

PS1: Not only that I don’t believe in IP/Copyright, I’m an ardent supporter of Free licenses. If you haven’t noticed yet, contents of this blog is licensed under WTFPL. You are free to use this quiz in whatever way you want, including erasing my name from, and presenting it as yours. A credit and a backlink is always nice, but not mandatory.

PS2: I normally use presentations as a support medium. There is lot of clues and gyaan that I add on-the-fly during the quiz session. You obviously would miss that. It is very likely that some of these doesn’t even look like a question. Be prepared for that.

PS3: If you’re in Hyderabad, do checkout the next session of K-Circle. The details are updated here every week.

PS4: People who share the same geography as mine, (HITEC City/Gachibowli) how about a Quiz club here in this part of the world? But mind, it’s not an easy thing to happen. I have been looking for a few folks who could help me set this up. If you’re interested do contact me or drop in a comment.

PS5: If you did enjoyed the quiz, and is looking for help in organizing a quiz, do contact me.

BTW, Terrific news: Infosys Pune and Chandigarh teams won their respective leagues, and moved on to national finals.

Quizzing Crazitiveness!

Hyd Quiz Forum, the Quiz club of Infosys Hyderabad, is a set of crazitive folks. We recently won the best club in Infosys Hyd award – an unlikely stuff to happen as we thought till recently.

Started in 2004, by a set of quizzing freaks, it initially existed virtually. When decided to move on from the online quizzing (email, forums) to Live quizzing, we wanted an unusual and attractive name. After several rounds of email discussions the founding fathers settled for the name T@6. What it originally meant, is still a mystery. Legends says that it was Thursdays at 6 (Since it was run initially at every Thursdays at 6 PM). We call it now Trivia at 6 (Now it run every Wednesdays at 5:30 PM).

For the initial few years, it ran as a cult club, where an attendance of more than 10 is considered unusual. It almost died, with the active quizzers either moving out or leaving. The revival happened somewhere in 2007 with a set of quizzers trying to bring back the strong culture back, and trying to make the club more popular. It took sometime to break the 2-digit attendance barrier. Since early 2007 T@6 happens every Wednesday without fail (with few exceptions of public holidays). We do have a regular attendance of 60-70 folks now, with sometime touching the magical 3 figure. The theme of these quizzes varies from the trivial Biz, Sports, Movies, Politics to bizzare ones, like the Anagram quiz, Food, Wine & Cigar etc.,

As the name suggests, T@6 is a more a Trivia sharing and fun event, than a core quizzing event.There are many folks, including me, for whom Wednesday is the best day of the week.

I attribute the success of T@6 to smart marketing, led by some crazitive quizzers, viz Ebenezer George (Who has written that brilliant text for the logo), Ashwin Alexander and Truly Yours.

I’m sharing a few posters we’ve designed for T@6 and other quizzes by HQF. Click on the image for a higher resolution version.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mother

Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, my favourite malayalam writer, during his elaborate writing career, has written a lot about his family. Following is an excerpt from his short story ‘Amma’ (അമ്മ, Mother) from the book Ormakurippu (ഓര്‍മ്മക്കുറിപ്പ്, Memoirs).

The story begins with the following lines.

The mother writes to the son struggling out his living amid the miseries of a distant city. She writes with pain in her heart.

“Son, I just want to see you.”

Basheer had left his home in his teens to join the freedom movement in Kerala. The story in a whole deals with his journey from Vaikom to Kozhikode to participate in Salt Satyagraha. This almost records his history as a freedom fighter.

But what I wanted to talk here about is ‘Mother’. Even though the story starts with a generalized statement about mother, he tells in his story that he is talking about his mother. Despite this one can clearly make out the ‘Mother’ references in the story is about ‘Mother’, not only his Mother. This ‘Mother’ could be the motherland too. It should be noted here that he uses the more generic ‘Amma’ than the more Muslim specific ‘Umma’ (ഉമ്മ).

After talking about his many experiences with freedom movement, police and a stint of stay in Jail, the story concludes when he returns to his home after many years.

When I entered the home my Mother asked. “Who is it?” I stepped onto the verandah. Mother lit a lamp, and asked as if nothing had happened, “Son, have you eaten anything?”

I said nothing. I was shaken and couldn’t breath, cried. The whole world is  asleep! But my Mother alone was awake! Mother brought a vessel of water and asked me to wash my hands and feet. Then she placed a plate of rice before me.

She asked me nothing.

I was surprised. “How did you know, Umma, that I was coming today?”

Mother replied, “Oh… Nothing. I would make food and wait every night.”

It was a simple statement. Every night I did not turn up, but mother had kept awake waiting for me.

The years have passed. Many things have happened.

But mothers still wait for their sons.

“Son, I just want to see you…”

Note: My Mother is unlikely to read this. But I would like to say to her – “Thanks… for being the Mother”.

Thumbs Up!

Two of my friends, Ajay Reddy and Inder Sen, will start a journey tomorrow of somewhat-unique-in-India types. They’ll travel almost quarter of India, making effective use of their thumbs to save a hell lot of money. They are set out for a Hitch-hiking trip all across 7 North-Eastern sister states of India – Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. All I can say is WOW!

Ajay and Inder is all set for their journey from tomorrow. They have set a limit to their daily budget to INR 150 (US $3). That is as much amount you might spend on a small Pizza in India. But the good thing is that the limited budget will not limit their ambitions. And they have found some funding in the form of sponsors – Some big names from Indian travel and tourism arena. They’ll be tweeting all along with #150aDay hashtag, blogging, photo blogging, podcasting and vlogging at Hitchhiking In India. I’ll among many who’ll tightly follow them through web. Apart from just hitchhiking they’ll be recording folk and tribal music, putting their amateur photography skills to test and try to capture the beauty of the North East through camera lens, mark their entire journey by the GPS coordinates and put the routes up on TripNaksha, release podcasts regularly which deal with the travel experiences and destination details and immerse into the culture that the north east has to offer.

Hitchhiking is an interesting mode of travel. You can meet a lot of people and make lots of friends. You can also become very frustrated, or encounter danger on the way; today’s drivers are more fearful of picking up hitchhikers than in the past. But it’s also a great feeling to get a ride after you’ve been waiting for a long time. People who do pick up hitchhikers tend to be very friendly. Sometimes you might have to walk all the day. Hitchhiking is the fun of travel meeting fun of uncertainty. Hitchwiki have some interesting information.

Ajay is my ex-colleague, even though I get to know him only after he left Infosys, to follow his dream. TripNaksha – what he calls as the best place for adventure travel in India. I know Inder as Ajay’s friend, when he talked to me about this trip. He was looking for someone who can spend sometime to customize and fix a Tumblr blog for them – which I had done pro bono with all my pleasure.

I hope they’ll have load of fun. Let them find themselves. Let them make a movie. Let them have loads of adventure. Let them have some unearthy experience. Let them add a lot to this page. I hope they will be LOST at least once, to complete the fun.

PS: Had Ajay contacted me with this idea couple of  years back, I would’ve happily jumped in and joined the horde. Someone else is living my dreams.

Kerala Congress – A Classical Case Study of Alphabet Politics

Kerala Congress parties should’ve been for Kerala what Dravidian parties are for Tamilnadu. Even though it followed almost the same pattern of ameoba replication, It never could grow as big, beyond Central Travancore. Even though the party has its presence amongst almost all castes in Kerala, this party is considered and belonged predominantly to Syrian Christians.

This particular regional party is a classical case study for Indian party politics – the alphabet politics. Since it’s inception in 1964, the party has seen many splits. More than ideological differences, individual interests of leaders and external influences has contributed more to it. K. M. Mani, one of it’s leaders had made this interesting observation that party has actually grown strong through its splits. “A party that splits as it grows, and grows as it splits.” To an extend this must be true. In normal cases. when a party splits, it’s enemy should get benefited. But in case of Kerala Congress, every time it splits, both the parties will get a representation in the cabinet, and the overall count of cabinet representation will go up, even if the no of MLAs remains the same or less.

Kerala Congress, itself was a result of a split in Indian National Congress. In 1964, the party was formed under the Leadership of K. M. George. Coming years, the Kerala Congress has suffered severe divisions and several parallel outfits have emerged, all claiming the name Kerala Congress.

The first split came in 1979 by K. M. Mani forming Kerala Congress (M). Rest of the leaders followed the trend: Kerala Congress (B) by R. Balakrishna Pillai, Kerala Congress (Jacob) by T. M. Jacob, Kerala Congress (Joseph) by P. J. Joseph, Kerala Congress (Secular) by P. C. George, Kerala Congress (Socialist) by Sunny Thomas and Indian Federal Democratic Party by P. C. Thomas. IFDP was the first party to move out of the LDF/UDF and joined hand on hand with BJP, and gave NDA its first breakthrough in Kerala.

Kerala Congress (Secular) which split from Joseph group, later merged with Mani group. IFDP which split from Mani group, later merged with Joseph group. The Socialist group, split from Secular group, later merged with Janata Dal (S) [The Janata Dal have a similar long and confusing split-merge history at national level]. A group of IFDP retains it’s own cadre from under M. P. George. Oh. Bloody Confusing! Somone who makes a chart of Kerala Congress history will sweat for sure.

Yesterday, P. J. Joseph announced the merger of Joseph group with Mani group. And as expected a rebel group under P. C. Thomas (the old IFDP group) reacted, and expelled Joseph from Joseph group. Probably they will be known as Kerala Congress (Thomas), as there is one IFDP, or they might merge with IFDP or any of the existing groups.

The dream of an United Kerala Congress is still far away, as you get couple more new groups with every merger.

Here is an interesting list of Indian National Congress breakaway parties.