A leaf flew from the past

I spent the large part of today's evening searching for G.V. Desani's "All About H. Hatterr" in all over the online stores. No luck! So just as my frustration was steaming up, my mind was flying from the bookstores of Nai Sarak to College Street with this rivetting conviction - "Had I been there, someone would have defintely got me a copy." And thinking about College Street, memories from years bygone rose up magically like the dead Lazarius. Random voices of the colloqialisms of Calcutta, hyperbolic chants of archaic Shakespere from my English class, and the voice of our dear Babus in the fish market all tied together in disctinctive cacophony.

And then as my fleeting mind punctuated, I got to see how things have changed. A part of my life with my surroundings and expereinces are not around me anymore. That's when I really know that I am growing old - when I realize that I have taken the train of life and left them behind in the station I grew up with.

Such an expereince that I got left behind is "Quizzing". The year was 1985, when cool Siddharth Basu visited our living rooms with Quiz Time and made quizzing a sexy pastime for my generation. By the time I was in middle school, my life was about reading weird facts and crazy theories. The urge to spit out the right answer in those 10 odd seconds took me to those dusty racks of my school library where hardly a sane soul would go. It introduced me to the history facts and figure, forced me read the daily newspapers, and expanded my eagerness to learn indiscriminately.

Time rolled by, and so did my passion grew. Calcutta was the place to be. Taking the tram to DI (Dalhousie Institute) and getting down at the "Quiz Stop"as it was colloqialised, Calcutta-style, just to register in yet another "open quiz". And there was our daddy - Neil O' Brien. In his typical manner he would say - "Back in the days of the Raj...." And then you know he is in his element. Other regulars were Francis Groser, Jug Suraiya, and Ramen "Ramu" Sen. My favorite was the Sportworld quiz. The prizes were hardly ever enticing. Who ever cared! Excitement was everything.

Where is that world now? Between "Weakest Link" and "Who wants to be a millionaire" I search for the spell that used to cast on me in those days gone by. Rather hopelessly! Quizzing as I knew, as I enjoyed, and as I had so dearly loved is a thing of my past. It's that mystical leaf that I have preserved in one of pages of my favorite book. I am complete with it. With that gone are those sleep-overs in friends' houses, the secret disapperance from the boring class -sit in the corner - roting those facts - getting caught by the Fr. George, and still be pardoned. And then when another quiz day came - that would the be-all and end-all of my existence. That's all history. Yet what remains is what once-a-favorite pastime has made out me. As Hercule Poirot would say - It's for "Those tiny little grey cells ... Mon Ami." And it also gave me the gift of reading and taught me the joy of winning.