Ramakrishnan V is a banker in Dubai. As is bound to happen when people have too many syllables in their names, everyone calls him by a shorter name, Ramkey. Movin Miranda does business development for a firm based out of Kuala Lumpur. Given that his name is already short and unusual, everyone calls him by his actual name. Ramkey and Movin, to all appearances, typify the South Indian expatriate. Soft-spoken, keeping mostly to themselves, hard-working, and meticulously planning their India trips around festivals.

Festivals of a different sort, though. Not Pongal, Deepavali, Christmas, and the likes. But esoteric ones that go by names like Askqance, Qfiesta, Kaikuu, and so on: quizzing festivals hosted by some of the most active quiz clubs in India.

The motivations of the few hundred who travel to these quiz fests are opaque to everyone else. There are usually anything between six and 12 quizzes, crammed into one long weekend. The sort of schedule which makes it a test of mental stamina more than anything else. They leave most participants exhausted. Frustrated, even. (It is hard to do well in any of these quizzes when every good quizzer turns up.) Yet people like Ramkey and Movin travel long distances to put themselves through this wringer. I do too.

First, some history. Cities like Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai have had a rich history of open quizzes. But for years and years, a Bengaluru quiz would just have Bangaloreans, a Kolkata quiz would just have quizzers from Kolkata, and so on. This also helped each city develop a distinctive style and flavour of quizzing. Very rarely would someone from another city, passing by for reasons of work or otherwise, happen to get a taste of the other city’s open quizzes.

Quizzers travelling to another city for the sole purpose of quizzing was so rare that when this happened, it gave rise to legends. A Bengaluru team’s journey to Kolkata for the North Star quiz led to stories of debauchery, some of which, I think, we may see in the movie Brahman Naman . Similarly, Karnataka Quiz Association’s (KQA) 10th anniversary quiz in 1993, and the 15th anniversary quiz in 1998, where the KQA sent out invites (and tickets) to teams from other cities, is another fount of quizzing legends. Chennai’s Landmark Quiz, and later the Odyssey Quiz, too, saw a fair number of outstation participants.

Then in 2003, on its 20th anniversary, the KQA decided that they needed to do something worthy of the occasion. Instead of just having one big quiz, they decided to cram in a few more, and gave the event a name: AsKQAnce (one of quizzer-quizmaster Arul Mani’s many puns). AsKQAnce ended up becoming KQA brand over the years. It was a hit. People came from all over India. Someone came up with the phrase “Woodstock of quizzing”, which has since been used to describe the festival.

AsKQAnce became an annual affair, going from a day-long event to a two-day one, and now in its current avatar, three full days of quizzing. Many other cities soon followed with their own versions: Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Pune. Goa, even.

The quizzes in every one of these fests are good. And on the rare occasion that your team manages to win one, the kick is excellent. Rare because a certain Chennai-Delhi-Singapore team called QED has a bit of a stranglehold on the winning. But one thing most people who come to these fests agree upon is that more than the quizzes, it is the gathering that gets them there; the chance to meet and socialise with awesome folks who have congregated from all over the country and beyond.

It is the same with me too. At the end of these quiz fests, I very rarely remember the actual quizzes, all questions having dissolved into a hazy blur. But the memories that stay are those of what happens in between, and after. The breakfasts, lunches, dinners. The conversations, the shenanigans involving hotel rooms. Quizzing cultures are a microcosm of the cities they were birthed in, and these fests are a good way to sample these places.

There is another possible spin too, which becomes evident if you look at quizzing as an amateur sport. In pretty much any amateur sport, from cricket to Frisbee, or trekking and mountain climbing even, you will see people form teams and travel (at their own expense) to some far-off place to indulge in a tournament or two for a few days, have a lot of fun along the way, and return winning usually nothing. You travel because you love the sport.

However irrational the expensive peregrinations of Ramkey or Movin might seem, it turns out they are just as rational as the ones who went to see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, or those who took a week off from work for a hike in the hills. It is just that they may not have the right photos for Facebook and Instagram, is all.

Thejaswi Udupa is Chief Technology Officer at buildkar.com . He lives in Bengaluru

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