“In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.” - Winston Churchill
Sapta and I became "chaddi-buddies" in the summer of 1996. We were acquainted with each other before, as both of us were in the same batch (Class X) in KV Minambakkam, but were from different sections. Although KV Minambakkam did have a Science stream, it wasn't really popular. The trend back then was for students to switch over to the state board after completing AISSE exams. Those who preferred to remain in CBSE chose more popular schools like P.S.B.B, Modern, St. John's, KV IIT etc. Having decided not to follow the herd, we chose (individually) to continue studying in KV Minambakkam. Ever since we met during the admission procedure, we hit off immediately. Both of our wavelengths matched and we shared a passion for the same sports and hobbies.
One of our passion was Quizzing. We were fortunate enough to get an opportunity to participate in numerous quizzes during that year. We managed to win quite a few of them as well. We had our own methodology while preparing for these quiz competitions. Each of us would pick an area and concentrate on it. Each of us had an area of expertise and in some areas/categories, we knew equally. Chennai was/is pretty famous for Quizzes and most inter-school quiz competitions involved a team of two or three.
During most of these quizzes (of 3 member teams) our partner in crime was Subramaniam K, (a Class IX student then). He also happened to be my brother's classmate (chaddi-buddy??). Subbu, as we used to address him, was a brilliant student. He had won the NTSE scholarship in Class VII, he was also a Y2K scholarship awardee. Subbu had a knack of remembering a lot of assorted stuff back then. You could have called him a Wikipedia. While there were other good Quizzers in the school, the powers that would be, decided to club us together and lo by the end of that academic year, we (Sapta, Subbu and I) came to be regarded as the best quizzing team in the school.
At the beginning of the next academic year (1997-1998), I came to be chosen as the house captain of Bharathi house, Sapta was chosen as the house captain of Ashoka. While Subbu came to be sorted into Shivaji house. So now we had a situation wherein, each member of the quiz team were part of separate houses. The annual school quiz competition that was conducted as part of CCA got hyped to the hilt! Personally, I was really determined to win the CCA cup for the house. Having already faced humiliation when Bharathi house stood last on Sports day, I wasn't willing to experience that again (Ashoka won the Sports cup)! Winning the quiz competition became a matter of pride, it was my path to redemption (You may think why the heck is this guy taking games so seriously, well that's me)!
During the run-up to the quiz competition, there was a lot of friendlies banters among us friends. My brother who belonged to Shivaji house (a decent quizzer himself), kept needling me that they had a very good team, and had a pretty good chance to secure the first place. Although I agreed with him that his team (Subbu, my brother, and two other guys) was good, he can't take Ashoka's team (Sapta, Ramprasad + 2 others) lightly. I told him that Sapta's knowledge in a lot of categories was pretty good. I did some groundwork to select the team for my house as well, and after much thought, we put up a decent team of me, Siddharth (a classmate of my Subbu and my brother) and two other guys.
In all of our discussions, it was a foregone conclusion that the first three places will go to either Ashoka, Bharathi or Shivaji. None of us (neither the participants nor the audience) were even giving a chance to the fourth house (Netaji)! The quizmaster was Ms. AR Lakshmi, PGT (History). She had prepared a well-researched set of questions for the competition. I must admit it was one of the best set of questions that I had seen.
The quiz competition involved 3 rounds which would be finished with a rapid-fire round. Predictably, Shivaji was leading at the end of the first two rounds, Bharathi and Ashoka shared the 2nd place and Netaji hadn't even opened their score. At the end of the third round, Shivaji remained first Bharathi managed to come second, while Ashoka and Netaji now shared the 3rd place. There was 5 points difference between Shivaji and Bharathi, while 2 points difference between Bharathi and Ashoka/Netaji. So, when we arrived at the rapid fire round, each team had a pretty good chance of finishing in the first.
In the rapid fire round, each of the team managed to score a point during the first 4 questions, and then everything changed!! Ashoka got a question wrong and Netaji answered it correctly on a bounce and won a point. They were now on-par with Bharathi in a score. They managed to get the question correct as well and overtook Shivaji. We now had only 1 question to go and whoever answered that correctly would win the quiz. Fortune favors the brave they say, Netaji managed to win the buzzer on the last question as well and got it correct! Before even any of us could realize what happened, the quiz competition was over! Netaji stood first, Shivaji second, Bharathi third and Ashoka fourth!!
Nethaji team was lead by Sumitra Datta (a classmate of Sapta and me), she had Rakesh (a classmate of Subbu and my brother) in her team and two other guys. We hadn't even considered them as a competition, let alone give them a chance! Our mistake was that in our arrogance and pride, we hadn't considered the strengths and weaknesses of the fourth team and spent a lot of time planning our strategies on the guys whom we thought would make a difference! I learned that day, that its wrong to underestimate any opponent. There can be no more humbling experience in humility than that what I learned with that loss.
