HYDERABAD: On the top floor of Columbus Hospital in Begumpet, the members of K-Circle (short for Knowledge Circle) gather every Saturday to celebrate half a century of trivia triumphs, lifelong friendships and the thrill of friendly competition, proving that the quest for knowledge never goes out of style. With a team of dedicated quizzers ‘bouncing’ or ‘pouncing’ for the right answers, the questions range from identifying a prominent Syrian politician to piecing together the connection between an 1814 oil painting ‘Grande Odalisque’ and the feminist activist group Guerrilla Girls to tracing the genesis of Bollywood tropes.
As the quizmaster skips across the room checking the answers, K-Circle, one of India’s oldest registered quiz clubs, continues to be the gateway into the world of fun trivia, peculiar facts and bizarre stories for generations of Hyderabadis.
However, founder K Srivatsa Iyengar, who was 23 at the time, tells TNIE that the club began with just eight members in 1972 at the YMCA in Secunderabad. Now 75, Srivatsa, with a laugh, shares, “There were dark periods where there were only three members, including me.”
It was when Srivatsa, a retired bank employee, was pursuing his MSc in Physics at Nizam’s College that he started the club to help students prepare for competitive exams. “You can get books and learn whatever you want but an extremely fast way you can learn is through a quiz,” he says.
According to the 75-year-old, most of the club’s former members went on to do well in their respective careers in different parts of the world. He points out that the demographic of the club has changed from only students to a mixed bag of individuals. “All of them are serious quiz participants. I never dreamt of coming up with such a thing,” he says with a smile.
Hurdles along the way
Devarajan T Padmanabhan, 60, who works in the private equity sector, was in Class 10 when he became a part of K-Circle. He recalls that he used to find 30–40 members at any time at the club participating in quizzes. “Questions used to be shorter. Today, you can give a lot of information on the slide,” he says.
Padmanabhan recalls, “It was the only place where one would meet people from different professions. We used to have people who were doing their PhD, or used to practise law or medicine. Maybe this is something possible for me too. That’s the great difference it was for me.”
When Padmanabhan returned to the club in 2004 after stints in various cities, he found that the club was in need of support. For the next 2–3 years, he helped the club organise quizzes in schools and colleges in order to put K-Circle back in the public eye.
The 6o--year-old highlights that the city was undergoing a sea of change, indirectly impacting the attendance of sessions. He says, “The concept of 9–5 was all gone. The city had expanded and traffic congestion had increased.”
In the beginning, members of K-Circle used to meet on Fridays, but this led to the quiz sessions being shifted to Saturday evenings.
When K-Circle moved out of the YMCA during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a former K-Circle member who came to their rescue. Dr Naresh Vadlamani, who owns Columbus Hospital, donated the hospital space to the club. K-Circle hopes to return to the YMCA soon.
Padmanabhan believes that the club still has more to offer. “People could find inspiration and mentors in this place,” he says.
Stating that he is not a regular member anymore, Padmanabhan says that people who have been part of the club at different points have benefited from their time here and wish the club well. He says, “The joy of seeing the club running is a completely different pleasure.”