The End of Nothingness

Nihilanth is a part-Latin, part-Sanskrit word meaning "The end of nothingness". 

***

We waited with bated breath as Team No. 6 got into a huddle, the quizmaster broke into a brisk walk towards the one raised hand rising from their table - they were seemingly going for broke, and we had to trust them. For a stage which had 24 quizzers exclusively from IITs and IIMs, it was funny how only nine of them were doing the math at that point. Team No. 6 was obviously one of them, and Kitty, Samaadhi and I in team no. 3 had no choice but to metaphorically bite our fingernails and literally chew off the skin around them as our bated breath turned us blue. We found out later team no. 1 on the far right, with Nene among them, were the only others who realised the importance of that pounce. The smug championship leaders sitting in the audience, had no idea of the significance of the ten points earned by team no. 6, then languishing in 7th place out of 8.

The most joyous high-fives the three of us shared then were easily the quietest. The louder ones had been for when Samaadhi comfortably identified the story of how his home state of Mysore was renamed to Karnataka, and when I'd earlier just taken a look at an early 19th century bust of a lion across a canal to proudly scribble Solani aqueduct. High-fives were accompanied with awestruck bows towards St. Kitts, as she pulled out an outrageous guess on unheard-of sculptors who've made statues of Rabindranath Tagore. Now all we needed to do was to ensure this last question didn't go past us…

***

Missing out on qualifying for the Sports Quiz rankled deeply, even as I bravely ventured to quip misguidedly - "I think we're among the top 10-20 sports quizzers in the country." That first trip to Mumbai was memorable, though, as the run-up to it and the hope in the journey back elevated Nihilanth, the inter-IIT-IIM quiz festival, to Holy Grail status.

The next edition took us to Ahmedabad, when I first marvelled at the genius of Louis Kahn's work. After missing out on qualifying in the General Quiz on the first day, hopes of making it in the later quizzes were high once again. Those hopes were cruelly crushed by some callous decision-making (Cup noodles and figuring out what TANSTAAFL meant versus the Lone Wolf quiz prelims) and some high-quality teams making a mark tough to replicate.

I missed the trip to Calcutta, and in a severely depleted field in Lucknow, Battula was by my side as I qualified for the finals of a Nihilanth quiz for the first time. Messrs. Malhotra and Mateen pulled the contingent more points as we made it to more finals, but only two podium finishes - including a blazing performance from the Chemical Brothers in clinching the business quiz  - were what the contingent had to show in my final year representing Roorkee.

***

Sometime during that chaotic first month in A, Kitty and I were talking about "Why MBA?". This wasn't the usual "I'll change the world" discussion, but "Why, really?" was the question. I was pleasantly surprised to hear myself say without any prior thought - "Two more years of college quizzing, right?". I don't think we've ever agreed on anything more than that.

A little over five months to that day, we were stuck firmly to our perforated wooden seats, our breath only more bated as the last question went past us unanswered. As it passed, I couldn't think of the not-quite-there's in Lucknow 2012, or the nearly-there's of Ahmedabad 2010, or even that first lurch of disappointment in Mumbai 2008. We were here in Mumbai, December 2012, back where the quest had first begun for me. And team no. 8 had just passed.

On the last question of the India Quiz, team no. 3 were declared winners but we went straight to team no. 6, where Amith, Sapru and Talwai clinched 5th place and the extra points we needed to retain the Nihilanth championship in Ahmedabad. As the six of us joined Sachin, Chandu and Saranyan for a huddle, the Holy Grail was in our hands, and full to the brim.