KOCHI: Captain cannot recollect the exact moment he felt quizzing was his cuppa. However, the games he played with his brothers, under the watchful eyes of his father, had a huge role in shaping his interest.
Major Chandrakant Nair is known as Captain everywhere, though he long surpassed the designation in the Armed Forces Medical Corps (AFMC). And it remains glued to him even after he quit the Forces after a brief stint, and took up quizzing as a career. It is more of a carnival and a camaraderie than a job, he says.
Now, zipping from one state to another, he still is the captain but his combat zone is the arena where he aces the game, makes it as easy as breath, and never fails to inspire.
“My parents were doctors and avid quizzers too. We were three brothers and our father used to treat us to rapid fires to keep our wild spirits at bay. It made us passionately curious and sensitive to what is going on around us. It also led us to inter-school, intercollegiate, and then open-level quizzing,” he says, recollecting his student days and the corridors of his alma mater AFMC, Pune.
It was on one such quiz jaunt that he met Anjali. “We had met when in school, at a quiz venue. Then, we lost touch. And years later, in 2009, I met her again at an open quiz forum.” Anjali went on to become his wife, and now, the mother of his daughter Vasundhara. “So, I would say quizzing gives us joy, information, the kick of knowledge, as well as a life partner,” he smiles.
Major Chandrakant Nair has been a quiz host for the past 10 years and clocked an average of 100 quizzes a year since 2013. Recently, the master quizzer was in Thiruvananthapuram to anchor the annual quiz contest ‘Jigyasa’ of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER).
“I have been coming for the annual event for the past 10 years,” he says. Though based in his hometown in Nilambur, he travels through the cities in India, hosting and organising contests.
“Quizzing has undergone a sea of change from the times I grew up in. The answer format then was a yes or a no. But now, the contestant is well prompted by the quiz master to work up her brain, memory, experiences, the world around and connect the dots before arriving at the answer. In this process, a whole lot of information is passed on unknowingly to the contest from the quiz master about how and why things are the way they are,” he says.
To illustrate this, he explains how a word came about when photography was taking off in the late 19th century. It later defined the act of recording of images. “The cameras then had a button which had to be pulled while looking through a long viewfinder. The term is ‘shooting’. Contestants are thus indirectly coached to think about whatever they know and have observed. Quizzing thus seems a mere game of information but is in fact a mental exercise that can improve and enhance lateral thinking in children and even in adults,” he says.
Another boon of the times is the way quizzing has grown to include people from all phases of life. “Globally, and even in India too, there are clubs and groups where quizzing is an activity that is passionately practised. This is not just a pastime but is a serious interest that has brought people together. The virtual world has only played a catalyst in this. The groups are more active and more bonded after the pandemic,” says the Captain, adding that there is a very close-knit community in Kerala.
“I even have a team called CIDs from Kerala with Hrishikesh Varma and Praveen V R. The name is a spin-off on the movie Nadodikkattu in which Mohanlal and Sreenivasan called themselves CIDs from Tamil Nadu. We participate in events as a team.”
The camaraderie of the teams show up in wild ways too: Captain remembers a group of quizzers, including him and Hrishikesh, riding up the Khardung La, where they held a quiz session “on top of the world”.
Yet the media coverage of the sport is a poor apology to what it was during the 1990s when Siddharth Basu and Derek O’Brien held the fort as the most-watched quiz masters. They introduced the Gen X and the millennials to the ultimate game of information.
“That kind of media coverage is missing now, though there were stray attempts to revive that trend. This gap could be filled because the quality of quizzers and their spectrum has bettered and widened. Thanks to programmes like Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), people in rural areas too find the game exhilarating,” Captain remarks.
The nature of quizzing, too, has become inclusive now. “We discussed how it can improve lateral thinking. But even beyond, it can help contestants delve deep into the story behind each question, where not just the answer is found but also the reason. At the General Quiz at NIT-Calicut recently, a famous photograph published in a Malayalam daily in 2018 became a question; a photo of Nipah warriors clicked by a news photographer. My question on this photograph prompted a discussion into why I could have chosen this particular picture,” he says.
So there is more to quizzing than just the questions, Captain asserts. It is about sensitivity to everything around you, and above all, the thirst to know.
“Something beautiful is happening among people who have this love for quizzing. They forge friendships and are sharing platforms cutting across many differences. Quizzing is thus beyond a few questions and snappy answers — it brings people together. And helps people keep the curious child alive in them,” Chandrakant says, hoping to remain the Captain of quizzing for as long as he can.