Sunday, February 13, 2011

Gnosiomania. Is that a word? No! It's a celebration.

Gnosiomania. That's the biggest knowledge fest of Asia hosted by the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad. In my four years of tryst with destiny as I would like to believe with Gnosio, never have I come across passions and emotions as wild as the ones witnessed during the latest edition of this big daddy of all quizzing fests anywhere on the planet. Already having registered itself in the Limca Book of Record for having the maximum number of questions asked during a single college fest of over 48 hours of non-stop quizzing extravaganza I might be permitted to assume that we achieved something great that is probably not going to be matched anytime soon. When I say we, it's a distinguished company of people with a desire and passion for quizzing and their never ending quest for achieving greatness.  


Ever since my 1st year days in college I dreamt of being the winner on that sacred stage, fighting it out with the very best that India had to offer, straining every neurotic muscle that traversed my brain looking for "that" bloody answer that would make me and my comrades immortal in the MNNIT folklore. Boy, it happened this time! Sick and tired of being so close and yet so far in the previous editions. Sick and tired of Zuhaib sticking his tongue out every single day of my life ridiculing me for my enforced absence from the sports quiz last year. Sick and tired of waiting for my moment under the sun. Sick and tired of waiting to see the dream come true. Come February 4th 2011, it was time to set the record straight. It was one last shot at glory. It was one last shot at immortality. 

This blog post is not about the quizzes we won or the manner in which we won as some might have believed looking at the previous lines. It's about everything that happened after the dust had settled down on three crazy days of mind-bending, nerve wracking search for answers that would lead me to reflect on my four years of romance with Gnosio. 


For a start, I would like to express my gratitude to Zuhaib for being my partner in crime for all these years. For sharing the highs and lows, for ridiculing me every single day of the last year, for making me hate him so much that if I was granted leniency for one crime that I could commit I would have fancied murdering him! Buddy, this college needs you to keep the passion going, you're the greatest quizzer I've met in my entire quizzing life! It was an absolute honour and delight to have quizzed with you. Sharing the classics and gudangs at daddu after every elims, going weak on our knees gazing at Remya Murleedharan, making Avinash Mudaliar the butt of all our jokes. I'm gonna miss all of this now that it's all over for me. 


Thank you Hemant and Dileep from the time of our first quiz together in 1st year to the last in final year. Thank you Shetty, Rathore (for your GPRS lifeline), Apurv, Karwa, Prady, Ojas and I might be missing some names here pardon me for my naiveness. The list would be incomplete without mentioning my awesome juniors and wingies Apurv, Gaurang and Siddhant. You guys are on the highway to hell! The biggest travesty would be if I forgot to mention Ali, Bhavani, DSingh and Mallu for the trips to Sher-e-Punjab in the aftermath of our homecoming :) 


Zuhaib with his time alone exemplified the rush of emotions brimming up a storm in the grey matter that the moment had brought us. The never ending hugs and high-fives that displayed the kind of desperateness of how badly we wanted this Gnosio to be ours. The feeling of emptiness on the following Monday when we slept our asses off not caring for a thing in this world knowing fully well that we had been through something great and no one could deny us our place in history of Gnosio. The commitments that I've since made to Zuhaib to come back next year to nail the holy grail of sports quiz that was so cruelly taken away from us in the shape of cricket quiz are yet to be fulfilled but as long as I have life and there's blood in my system no one can deny me the reunification chance with Zuhaib. 


P.S : Treats follow this blog post :)







Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Happy Homecoming :)


Thank You NIT Rourkela for making a fucked up Inter NIT fixture. Thank You for flicking my phone. Thank You for the utterly tasteless food. Rourkela!!! Yeah that’s what they call a place where you get ridiculous people make even more ridiculous faces when you ask for “Gudang Garam”!!! Rourkela!!! Yeah that’s the place where you’ll find no trains or buses at night cause of some shitheads who decide to blow up anything and everything that even remotely moves or appears to move. A rocking winter vacation was something that I badly needed after my Inter NIT misadventure. But I wasn’t done getting my ass busted yet!! Got the lamest train booked for the trip to Mumbai when I would have reached faster on foot. Lame food, lame train, lame co-passengers and no phone makes for a short trip to hell I know for sure after this experience.

 After four miserable days of sad train travel I reached home (read heaven!!!!), the state the world calls Goa, famous for it’s sun, sand, free booze, intoxicating music and beautiful women (With all due respect to Goan Women, it’s the foreigners I’m talking about over here ;) Mamma!!! It’s a special feeling being back home after getting my ass busted by jaundice, kidney stones, placement tension, fucked up pace of project work, sleepless nights spent worrying about passing grades in Instrumentation and last but not the least, the shattered dream of Inter NIT. Mom didn’t take long in deciding to double my weight by feeding me left, right and center. I was being stuffed with food when I was more interested in my other "commitments" . It didn’t take long for me to feel the homely vibes. 

Slowly but steadily things began to settle down. Mom decided to let me feed myself when for the first couple of days she made me believe that my hands were more of a vestigial body part. I was done "bird" watching, Vasco wasn’t all that interesting, Inox didn’t appeal to me and beaches were riddled with more CISF personnel than hot Russian beauties and the biggest letdown was the fact that no Sunburn passes this year!! Lick!! how exactly was I going to spend my vacations?

Just when it all seemed lost, enter reunion party plans!!! It’s been four long years since we said goodbye to some people whom we may never ever meet again, four years since we last played football on the blessed turf of NPS Goa, four years since we’d broken a few lights and fans of the activity hall at school and four years since we’d drank water from the taps of “Ganga”. Reunion plans had got me buzzing. It was decided that we meet at the school grounds, play a bit of kick ball and then we head for a night out and a late night beach ride.

Playing football for reunion wasn’t exactly some people’s idea of fun I guess. Huge bellies, floaters for footwear, jeans for the kit and a few shots of absolute vodka was what people came armed with for the reunion special fixture against the present school team. Boy!!! Didn’t we kick some major ass that day! For the record, the match was a tied game at 2-2 but my God, people were putting foot to ball for probably the first time after school and they were amazingly brilliant. Be it Vari in goal with his skewed sense of judgment or Abhyuday with a few vodka shots cursing every single person who passed the ball to him that day. Was an amazing performance by the “Legends” I must say. After this bullfight we headed straight to Rohit’s flat for a quick shower and boardroom meeting to decide upon the plans for the night. Sagarika and Pooja!! Yes, that was the ladies count for the reunion :( I mean come on man, it’s a darn reunion man you gotta make your presence felt. I can understand that getting your ass kicked at office is an art and activity some people specialize and relish in equal measure but you still gotta take time out for one bloody reunion!! Btw, thank you Sagarika and Pooja for turning up and a greater sense of gratitude for staying there inspite of feeling threatened by Abhyuday in more ways than one!

Screw you Rohit Rai for your idea of dinner at Gawin’s. It was awful man!!! Not the food but just the place, for Christ sake it was a god damn family place man! We sat there as if we had just finished a business meeting and wanted a quick dinner before we headed to our beds. It was sad!! But.... Cheap cheap cheap !!! That’s what I wanted to yell after every shot of BP that I had over there. Bloody hell!! 60ml shots of BP for just 40 bucks! That’s what I call cheap !! It’s heaven on earth in whichever way you look at it. So anyways, after the dinner we headed to Colva for some “sex on the beach”. It was fuck awesome man!! Whatever time we spent there was scintillating. Heading back to the flat most people had lost all sense and mind and either they dozed off in the car or were uttering shit loads of crap. I was in none of these categories :D 

Scenes at Rohit’s place-armpit lover(Abhishek Bhatnagar, chupa rustam!!) thank you Abhyuday for being our version of Wikileaks and Julian Assange!! Dancing and prowling on the mattresses was a bullshit idea but the crap coming out of people’s mouth was way more interesting and weighed in gold. One man to whom the party belonged-Abhyuday!! The Simha from Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka and also Honolulu!! Man you rocked the party!! Someone please tell Abhyuday how much I’m missing him after the party!! 

I missed most of the happenings at night courtesy of being farted out of my senses by Vari Pajji that I had an instantaneous blackout and brainwash and was induced into sleeping suffering from the after effects of standing upto Vari’s weapon of mass destruction and biological weaponry!! They were a wonderful few hours that we had, partied like there’s no tomorrow and slept like crazy dogs the following day. Thank you people for being there and making it an unforgettable day. 

For the people who missed out, we missed you guys and though we didn’t exactly realize that after being drunk but it goes without saying that it would have been so much more fun if the rest of the gang had joined in. Until the next edition of reunion party, it’s a goodbye from The Legend to his brethren!! Sayonara!! Ciao!!

P.S : Abhyuday, you’re one crazy son of a bitch man!!