The Boat Club Quiz Club
When we hear the word ‘quiz’ most of us tend to scamper back and willingly allow the geeks to have the centre stage. The Boat Club Quiz Club (BCQC) however seems to have successfully induced the ‘fun element’ in quizzing and its weekly casual quiz sessions have been recording thumping numbers to substantiate this claim. So we decided to find out the root cause behind this miraculous transformation.
The club came into being in the early nineties when students of the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) began quizzing informally on Saturday afternoons after college. They would meet at COEP’s Boat Club (a preferred venue for most extra-curricular college activities) for tea, snacks, and a casual question and answer round.
This tradition was kept alive by successive batches. Several non-COEP students also began attending these activities and many COEP alumni kept their ties intact, lending the club a pan-Puneri flavour. So what was once the COEP Saturday Quiz Club came to be known as the ‘Boat Club Quiz Club’.
The BCQC is an informal group and there is no procedure per say for becoming a formal member. Most of the club’s activities are managed by volunteers. The ‘core group’ consists of both students & professionals. Some are more active than others and the active ones have a greater influence on proceedings.
Though, the club is based in Pune, it is often visited by guest quizzers from other cities when they are in town and some of their alumni have formed little quizzing groups in other places as well. These include cities like Bangalore & Chennai, which have dedicated quiz clubs with rich histories.
Talking about the varied activities of the BCQC, Ramanand- an old member of the club, explains, “Different activities have had different histories. The most basic activity is the ‘BC session’ – an informal weekend quizzing session where someone volunteers to ask questions and the rest form teams. This lasts for a couple of hours and perhaps is almost unchanged from the days of our quizzing forefathers”.
The more formal ‘Open Quizzes’ where people can compete with each other, were introduced by the BCQC in 2005. These are a mix of theme and general quizzes and happen once in two months. These quizzes are open for all irrespective of age or background. The club also organises quizzes for other educational institutes like schools and colleges which are held from January to March.
Some of the club’s members have gone on to win national prizes of the highest repute. Ramanand is one of them who decoded Siddharth Basu’s knotty questions to earn the title of the Mastermind India-2002 on BBC World. Commenting on his win Ramanand says, “For us, those who have won big prizes are in no way different from those who may not have done so. I was fortunate enough to be able to go all the way despite the presence of some excellent quizzers.”
In terms of pure quizzing satisfaction, he admits that there are other performances that he has enjoyed more. But he is quick to add, “The reputation of Mastermind did help me communicate my club’s identity to non-quizzers. And I got to be on TV without making too much of a fool of myself. I did have some people staring and pointing fingers at me on the road (after the competition), but that only lasted for about three days”.
Ramanand is the youngest and the last person to win the BBC Mastermind Quiz. As a part of the quiz competition he got the opportunity to travel to three heritage locations in India. He recalls, “The format of the quiz and its austere setting was quite different from what I was used to.” Nonetheless, he did great to put Pune on the national quizzing map.
Ramanand loves both, quizzing as well as organising quizzes and feels they complement and feed into each other. He explains, “I love the analytical & lateral thinking approach to answering questions, and duelling with the wiles of a quizmaster. The ‘high’ of ‘working out’ an answer is the best thing in quizzing. But I am also fond of making questions, which is a creative activity involving a variety of skills in writing, design, and finding topics worth asking.”
When asked about the popularity of quizzes in India post KBC Ramanand responds, “It’s hard to say if there ever was a craze. Interest seems randomly generated: some years, we have a lot of newcomers joining us, sometimes we see lesser attendance.”
He, however maintains that quality is more important that quantity. He adds, “The number of participants is secondary to the quality of the offerings. The best & most committed quizzers are the ones who come for the questions, not the prizes, and hopefully, we will never run out of them.”
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