Quiz Master (English!)

In an earlier post, I had written about Saraswat Youths’ Association (SYA), a voluntary organisation where I started teaching in 1989.  The same year SYA was celebrating silver jubilee of its formation.  It was decided to organise an inter-school quiz competition as part of the silver jubilee celebrations.  I was studying Pre-Degree (equivalent to plus-two) at that time.  Since I had already conducted few quiz competitions earlier, the responsibility of being the quiz master fell on my shoulders.  We printed the brochure and sent it to all leading schools in and around Kochi.

Abhai Kumar, my cousin, was in-charge of the quiz competition.  Two weeks before the competition, on a Sunday, we gathered at the office of SYA to discuss the modalities of organising the competition.  During the discussion, Abhai said, the quiz has to be conducted in English.  This was a shock to me.  All the quizzes that I had conducted earlier were in Malayalam.  Having studied in a Malayalam medium school, my communication skills in English were very poor.  Had it been an informal discussion with someone in English, I would have still agreed.  But being on the centre stage and hosting a competition for about two hours in English was beyond my imagination. 

I started arguing with Abhai that the programme has to be in Malayalam, but he was in no mood to concede.  On the same day a Carnatic music programme titled ‘Sangeetha Sudha’ was organised on the ground floor of the building.  While the musical notes were touching high octaves on the ground floor, our argument was heating up on the first floor!  At one point, I even told him, ‘If you want the show to be in English, please look for another quiz master’.  Finally, Abhai, who has always been a better negotiator won the argument.  He told me, ‘First you prepare all questions in Malayalam, I will help you translate them to English’. 

On the day of the event, while I was cycling to the venue, one question kept ringing in my mind, ‘Am I going to spoil the show?’.  There was a written round in the beginning to select the best eight teams that would go on the stage and participate in the competition.  When the results of the written round were declared, my anxiety increased, because out of the eight teams that were shortlisted, six came from the leading English medium schools of Kochi.  Pretending to be confident, I started the show.  The competition had ten rounds.  I somehow managed the first round.  The second round also passed.  Slowly my confidence level started moving up.  As I moved from one round to the other, I saw the participating teams as well as the audience enjoying the show.  Finally, when the competition came to an end, I had done a reasonably good job.  Abhai, who was sitting in a corner watching all this, slowly walked up to me, hit on my shoulder, and said, ‘What did you say on that day, look for another quiz master? I knew you would do it!’. 

Life is like that!  At times when we don’t have confidence in our own capabilities, someone comes up showing tremendous confidence in us.  They force us to break our comfort zone and surge ahead.  They take us to the next level.  This is exactly what Abhai did to me.  Today I get many students from semi-urban and rural areas, who lack confidence in communicating in English.  I narrate this story to them and tell them, once you make up your mind, sky is the limit.