One Missed Call …

For the last two days, I’ve been thinking over what my “comeback” post should look like. I had made up my mind to crib about how difficult the last six months have been – the sheer physical exhaustion and mental tiredness et al, why one should choose his project topics carefully and so on. But today’s proceedings put me out of this conrundrum. What follows is a simple account of today’s events. It involves a lot of enthusiasm and a slight sense of resignation.

I have missed the last two quizzes due to “educational hazards”. Practicals, lack of enthusiam, and lack of partners ensured that I wasn’t able to attend the Sweden Memorial Quiz at IITB and the NITIE Biz Quiz. So, it would be an understatement to say that I was eager to attend today’s Biz Quiz at NMIMS. With two spots in the finals reserved for student teams, qualification was an added incentive.

Mr.Diniz agreed to partner me and we were all set to have an almighty crack at the elims. Another bunch of enthusiastic juniors who call themseleves Mayuresh and Gautam were also sailing in the same boat. The 25 question elims was what you’d call a horror elims. It was like facing Lasitha Malinga’s inswinging yorkers wearing Kolhapuri chappals. We flapped our tiny little grey cells forward and backward, often in futility, and managed to get a grand total of 4 questions correct which gave us 4*2=8 points . Mayuresh and Gautam got anything between 2.5 and 4.5 questions correct, a fact that we haven’t been able to establish yet.

Partly dejected and totally deflated, we whiled away time, having a quick bite at the nearby eatery. And while we were snacking, Mr. Diniz’s phone did a jig in his pocket. A pity that we didn’t pay any heed to it. Two MICA teams had qualified from the students’ “quota” but had to leave for Ahmedabad. Hence, the organisers had to replace them with teams three and four.

As we were sitting in the pretty cozy audience environment and having a really good time drowning can after can of the greatest energy drink to come out of this country – Cloud Nine, we suddenly realised that the student teams on stage had scored 6 points each. At that precise moment, I hit my head against the table in utter frustration. Next thing we managed to do is to call the “missed call”. It turned out that the person on the other end was just ten yards away. He came up to us and we had an animated discussion which culminated with the realisation that we’d missed our chance to make the stage because we had failed to answer the call !

Ah. A day of missed chances. Why was I not called when Oswin didn’t pick up his phone ? Why weren’t Mayuesh or Gautam never given a ring when they too had got more than both the student teams on stage ? We gulped down some more Cloud 9 finding it difficult to distingush the bitter taste of disappointement from the equally obnoxious aftertaste of Cloud 9. (Seriously, who the hell drinks Cloud 9. How do they manage to sell this thing ?)

Not many B-school quizzes have reserved seats for students’ in the final. And battling with the corporate behemoths is a real challenge. Hence, it hurts to be stripped off a chance to “make the stage”. But there will be a next time, provided these menacing cell phones don’t sell us down the river.

Tagged as:  nmims quiz · Quizzing