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Life: The great indian trivial pursuit
It may have killed the proverbial cat, but curiosity fuels the life of many a quizzer and trivia buff. Tareque Laskar explores the great democratisation of quizzing in India
In the climax of “Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull”, when Irina Spalko, the Soviet agent, finally grabs hold of the Crystal Skull with the help of Indiana Jones, she demands to ‘know everything’. As the crystal starts transferring knowledge into Irina, it becomes too much to take for Co. Spalko who spontaneously combusts.
Knowledge can be an overwhelming experience, but somehow even the most intellectually disinclined among us never stop pursuing it. Nowhere is it more evident than the simple act of quizzing – of coming up with an answer to a question, whether on a game show playing for millions or in an informal parlour game playing for pride. Answering a question is a strange kind of rush, experienced by seasoned quizzers and amateurs alike. And lately, it would seem that India is being swept by a quizzing revolution and the sport (yes, it is a mindsport) has gone mainstream in a big way. No longer is being a quiz master just a hobby; it is a career, no longer is quizzing the lone bastion of the nerds; it’s a game everyone can play.
But just how did this revolution happen? Giri Balasubramium, CEO of Greycaps, a quizzing company, and a popular quizmaster nationwide told TSI, “Quizzing has changed completely in the last two decades especially because the world we live in is a different one today. For starters, information is today available to all at the click of a mouse, hence quizzing has moved on from recall of facts to application of knowledge.” The old school quizzers may have played mostly for bragging rights, but now the medium, says Giri, is “an alternative platform for learning in schools and colleges and a high stakes event on TV.”
Most pre-liberalisation Indians perhaps remember quizzing from the days of a certain Siddhartha Basu hosting ‘Quiz Time’ on DD. And most post liberalisation ones would have had the ‘Bournvita Quiz Contest’ hosted by Derek O’Brien as a fixture on their Sunday viewing list. Arun Varma, an ex Google employee and an ardent quizzer who currently is trying to make quizzing more accessible to a larger audience through his venture ‘Brandgyan’ puts things into perspective, “Quizzing was unfortunately seen as a niche exclusive interest of a select intellectually elite during the times of 'Quiz Time' in the late eighties.” But things changed dramatically as the likes of O’Brien took on the mantle. Says Varma, “I personally credit Derek O Brien as a change maker who with his charismatic, youthful persona and creative content changed perceptions of quizzing. His shows like 'Bournvita Quiz Contest', played a humongous role in the gradual change. This change got reflected at the grass root level at colleges, B-Schools, corporates and quizzing moved out of the confines of quizzing clubs.”
The phenomenon of the everyday quizzer came to a head with the advent of “Kaun Banega Crorepati” the Indianized version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” hosted by Amitabh Bachchan. In one fell swoop, a simple game of questions and answers revived the flagging fortunes of a megastar and a TV channel. And the mastermind behind it was a man who had hosted the Indian version of BBC’s iconic ‘Mastermind’, Siddartha Basu. When asked by TSI what led him to institutionalise a hobby through the landmark TV show, Basu explains (see full interview on page), “In mainstream education, I'd resisted the whole Q&A format as school textbooks for more than 20 years, because I couldn't countenance burdening kids with a whole lot of additional facts to get by rote, till we developed a set of imaginative general knowledge workbooks with Encyclopedia Britannica, which took over a year in the making.”
The imagination and the creativity in the formats and the media in which it is being delivered makes quizzing a powerful medium today. On one end of the spectrum are the shows that appeal to purists (like ‘Mastermind’) while on the other, there are formats of what Varma calls ‘junta quizzing’ (like KBC). This great democratisation of knowledge is a culmination of three big social shifts – the rising importance of education, the ubiquity of technology and the ease of access to information. Rahat Taslim, the first crorepati in the current season of KBC, would have remained an obscure name but her stupendous feat now becomes a beacon for those who seek redemption in life through knowledge.
Says Giri, “Fundamentally mankind draws a lot of satisfaction and experiences a feel good factor while being in a position where "you know something that the others don’t" - this coupled with the innate curiosity in a human to know more things beyond his life (from quizzing pros to gossip mongers) creates a fascinating setting to see 'who knows how much'. It automatically forms a great mind sport bringing knowledge, suspense and entertainment value together within a time frame.”
We all are here seeking answers, whether to the big questions like philosophers or to smaller ones. And perhaps every answer that we get to know or every question at a quiz we get to answer takes us symbolically closer to some kind of enlightenment. That path to enlightenment being lit by the spotlights of entertainment makes it an irresistible one. Perhaps that is why everyone sympathised and identified with Jamal’s journey in Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire”. As Giri so aptly puts it, “The key change is quizzing has come a long way from what you ask to how you ask it.”
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Life: The great indian trivial pursuit
It may have killed the proverbial cat, but curiosity fuels the life of many a quizzer and trivia buff. Tareque Laskar explores the great democratisation of quizzing in India
In the climax of “Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull”, when Irina Spalko, the Soviet agent, finally grabs hold of the Crystal Skull with the help of Indiana Jones, she demands to ‘know everything’. As the crystal starts transferring knowledge into Irina, it becomes too much to take for Co. Spalko who spontaneously combusts.
Knowledge can be an overwhelming experience, but somehow even the most intellectually disinclined among us never stop pursuing it. Nowhere is it more evident than the simple act of quizzing – of coming up with an answer to a question, whether on a game show playing for millions or in an informal parlour game playing for pride. Answering a question is a strange kind of rush, experienced by seasoned quizzers and amateurs alike. And lately, it would seem that India is being swept by a quizzing revolution and the sport (yes, it is a mindsport) has gone mainstream in a big way. No longer is being a quiz master just a hobby; it is a career, no longer is quizzing the lone bastion of the nerds; it’s a game everyone can play.
But just how did this revolution happen? Giri Balasubramium, CEO of Greycaps, a quizzing company, and a popular quizmaster nationwide told TSI, “Quizzing has changed completely in the last two decades especially because the world we live in is a different one today. For starters, information is today available to all at the click of a mouse, hence quizzing has moved on from recall of facts to application of knowledge.” The old school quizzers may have played mostly for bragging rights, but now the medium, says Giri, is “an alternative platform for learning in schools and colleges and a high stakes event on TV.”
Most pre-liberalisation Indians perhaps remember quizzing from the days of a certain Siddhartha Basu hosting ‘Quiz Time’ on DD. And most post liberalisation ones would have had the ‘Bournvita Quiz Contest’ hosted by Derek O’Brien as a fixture on their Sunday viewing list. Arun Varma, an ex Google employee and an ardent quizzer who currently is trying to make quizzing more accessible to a larger audience through his venture ‘Brandgyan’ puts things into perspective, “Quizzing was unfortunately seen as a niche exclusive interest of a select intellectually elite during the times of 'Quiz Time' in the late eighties.” But things changed dramatically as the likes of O’Brien took on the mantle. Says Varma, “I personally credit Derek O Brien as a change maker who with his charismatic, youthful persona and creative content changed perceptions of quizzing. His shows like 'Bournvita Quiz Contest', played a humongous role in the gradual change. This change got reflected at the grass root level at colleges, B-Schools, corporates and quizzing moved out of the confines of quizzing clubs.”
The phenomenon of the everyday quizzer came to a head with the advent of “Kaun Banega Crorepati” the Indianized version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” hosted by Amitabh Bachchan. In one fell swoop, a simple game of questions and answers revived the flagging fortunes of a megastar and a TV channel. And the mastermind behind it was a man who had hosted the Indian version of BBC’s iconic ‘Mastermind’, Siddartha Basu. When asked by TSI what led him to institutionalise a hobby through the landmark TV show, Basu explains (see full interview on page), “In mainstream education, I'd resisted the whole Q&A format as school textbooks for more than 20 years, because I couldn't countenance burdening kids with a whole lot of additional facts to get by rote, till we developed a set of imaginative general knowledge workbooks with Encyclopedia Britannica, which took over a year in the making.”
The imagination and the creativity in the formats and the media in which it is being delivered makes quizzing a powerful medium today. On one end of the spectrum are the shows that appeal to purists (like ‘Mastermind’) while on the other, there are formats of what Varma calls ‘junta quizzing’ (like KBC). This great democratisation of knowledge is a culmination of three big social shifts – the rising importance of education, the ubiquity of technology and the ease of access to information. Rahat Taslim, the first crorepati in the current season of KBC, would have remained an obscure name but her stupendous feat now becomes a beacon for those who seek redemption in life through knowledge.
Says Giri, “Fundamentally mankind draws a lot of satisfaction and experiences a feel good factor while being in a position where "you know something that the others don’t" - this coupled with the innate curiosity in a human to know more things beyond his life (from quizzing pros to gossip mongers) creates a fascinating setting to see 'who knows how much'. It automatically forms a great mind sport bringing knowledge, suspense and entertainment value together within a time frame.”
We all are here seeking answers, whether to the big questions like philosophers or to smaller ones. And perhaps every answer that we get to know or every question at a quiz we get to answer takes us symbolically closer to some kind of enlightenment. That path to enlightenment being lit by the spotlights of entertainment makes it an irresistible one. Perhaps that is why everyone sympathised and identified with Jamal’s journey in Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire”. As Giri so aptly puts it, “The key change is quizzing has come a long way from what you ask to how you ask it.”
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2 comments:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a 2008 American adventure film. It is the fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, created by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. Released nineteen years after the previous film, the film acknowledges its star Harrison Ford's age by being set in 1957.
Some fans of the franchise who were disappointed with the film adopted the term "nuked the fridge," based on a scene in the film where Indiana Jones survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator, which then blows Jones miraculously all the way to safety. To users of the phrase, the phrase denotes the point in a movie series when it has passed its peak and crossed into the level of the absurd, similar to "jumping the shark" on television. This phrase has since appeared across the Internet
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