It's been a good 8 months now, and I guess I am as settled now in Pune as I'm ever going to be. Many things have changed in the ten years I was away. The traffic is worse than I'd imagined - but there are also lot more good restaurants now. It takes a good 45 minutes to get back home from Kalyani Nagar in the evenings - but I have hired a driver, who is doing a good job and spares me the trauma of facing the evening crawl.
One aspect of Pune that has survived and even thrived, thankfully, is the Pune quizzing circuit. About a month into my second innings in Pune, I was thrilled to hear that the COEP Open Quiz, Chakravyuh, was taking place soon. And the bedrock of Pune quizzing - or as others prefer to call him, the "benevolent dictator for life", J Ramanand, was kind enough to orient me on when and where the event was happening.
I was conscious of my salt-and-pepper hair tone as I drove towards COEP that Saturday morning. Back in the nineties, quizzing had been a popular activity for students but not for the older generation. And in the early 2000s when Chakravyuh came into being, the participants were a combination of students and the young IT crowd. I'd rarely seen middle-aged gents anywhere near a Pune quiz (and ladies of any age). Reaching the venue, my fears were confirmed. The quiz was part of an inter-collegiate technology festival, and there was a vast crowd of youngsters milling around. But walking up the stairs into the auditorium, a very pleasant surprise was in store - quite a few old-timers waiting for the quiz to start - including some juniors from college, now comfortably in their mid-thirties, and best of all, at least one person senior to me!
The catch, though, was that all the serious quizzers had taken the event seriously, and had teamed up with a like-minded partner. I, on the other hand, was in the "ha-ha, lets have some fun today and go for a quiz" mode. The organisers were kind enough to find me a partner - a first-year student from Modern College of Engineering. In my student days, the University of Pune had 17 engineering colleges affiliated to it. Now there must be a hundred, this Modern college amongst them. While my partner was no quizzer - this was the first quiz he was attending, and that too, out of boredom - it was good nonetheless to have someone sitting next to me through the 30 minute written elimination round.
The elimination round started about an hour behind schedule, making me feel right at home. No self-respecting Pune quiz has ever started on time! I was surprised and happy to be able to answer some questions correctly, and was able to make educated guesses for many others. The review of the quiz on the Boat Club Quizzers website mentioned that a lot of questions were repeats, and hence easy to answer. But this didn't help me much, coming back into Pune quizzing after a 10 year hiatus.
So it was a moment of real joy when the scores were read out and I realised I'd managed to sneak into the finals, as the last qualifier!
We didn't exactly set the stage on fire in the finals, finishing second-last. But winning wasn't the goal - it was enjoying myself while not looking like a complete fool on stage. Thanks to the quizzing circuit and to the Chakravyuh organisers, I found my way back to a lovely hobby, reconnected with old friends and look forward to more good times when quizzing in Pune!
One aspect of Pune that has survived and even thrived, thankfully, is the Pune quizzing circuit. About a month into my second innings in Pune, I was thrilled to hear that the COEP Open Quiz, Chakravyuh, was taking place soon. And the bedrock of Pune quizzing - or as others prefer to call him, the "benevolent dictator for life", J Ramanand, was kind enough to orient me on when and where the event was happening.
I was conscious of my salt-and-pepper hair tone as I drove towards COEP that Saturday morning. Back in the nineties, quizzing had been a popular activity for students but not for the older generation. And in the early 2000s when Chakravyuh came into being, the participants were a combination of students and the young IT crowd. I'd rarely seen middle-aged gents anywhere near a Pune quiz (and ladies of any age). Reaching the venue, my fears were confirmed. The quiz was part of an inter-collegiate technology festival, and there was a vast crowd of youngsters milling around. But walking up the stairs into the auditorium, a very pleasant surprise was in store - quite a few old-timers waiting for the quiz to start - including some juniors from college, now comfortably in their mid-thirties, and best of all, at least one person senior to me!
The catch, though, was that all the serious quizzers had taken the event seriously, and had teamed up with a like-minded partner. I, on the other hand, was in the "ha-ha, lets have some fun today and go for a quiz" mode. The organisers were kind enough to find me a partner - a first-year student from Modern College of Engineering. In my student days, the University of Pune had 17 engineering colleges affiliated to it. Now there must be a hundred, this Modern college amongst them. While my partner was no quizzer - this was the first quiz he was attending, and that too, out of boredom - it was good nonetheless to have someone sitting next to me through the 30 minute written elimination round.
The elimination round started about an hour behind schedule, making me feel right at home. No self-respecting Pune quiz has ever started on time! I was surprised and happy to be able to answer some questions correctly, and was able to make educated guesses for many others. The review of the quiz on the Boat Club Quizzers website mentioned that a lot of questions were repeats, and hence easy to answer. But this didn't help me much, coming back into Pune quizzing after a 10 year hiatus.
So it was a moment of real joy when the scores were read out and I realised I'd managed to sneak into the finals, as the last qualifier!
We didn't exactly set the stage on fire in the finals, finishing second-last. But winning wasn't the goal - it was enjoying myself while not looking like a complete fool on stage. Thanks to the quizzing circuit and to the Chakravyuh organisers, I found my way back to a lovely hobby, reconnected with old friends and look forward to more good times when quizzing in Pune!
