Déjà vu

The Karnataka Quiz Association celebrated its 22^nd Anniversary last Sunday (June 19) with its annual quiz festival called ASKQANCE at Guru Nanak Bhavan, Bangalore. As part of the fest, a general, open quiz - Sesame! The Open Quiz was conducted by Arul Mani. Out of the 44 questions in the written prelims, we (Mukund, Ganesh, Prithwi & myself) got 33 right which turned out to be the second highest score (the first being 36). In the finals however, we ended up in the 4^th place, missing out on the 3^rd by a mere 10 points. The Quiz Foundation of India team with Samanth, Swami & two others won the quiz by a huge margin, scoring 226 points, with the nearest team having scored 101. For having reached the finals, we got book coupons from Premier Bookshop worth Rs.250 each. In addition to that, we also bagged the Best College Team prize - coupons entitling us to books worth Rs.150 each. Good ROI considering that we managed to avoid paying the entry fee altogether by registering as an outstation team, which we technically were since we were representing our college.

For last year's edition of the quiz, Ganesh had not been there. So we went with some other fellow called Rohit. We came second in the prelims & were 4^th in the finals with Anustup Datta's team being seated next to us (as usual). Talk about déjà vu!

Yesterday I went to Premier which is situated on Museum Road to redeem the prize coupons. After an hour of browsing through their collection, I settled on Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and Peter Pan by J M Barrie.

The problem with Premier is that most of the books there are arranged in stacks with almost no space between adjacent stacks. This makes the task of browsing through the books quite difficult & irritating at times (for me, at least). This seemingly precarious arrangement also means that you have to be very careful while pulling out a book - a hasty withdrawal might cause considerable embarrassment (pun unintended), not to mention the inconvenience. Decidedly, the place is great if you are hunting for a particular title - delegate the job to the efficient attendants & they will lay their hands on the exact stack which hides your quarry, provided it is available. The outermost stacks generally contain the newer books & bestsellers while the interior stacks contain older books, classics & the rarely bought ones. But sadly, searching the same isn't exactly easy & this, I feel, translates to lost business for the proprietor (Mr.T S Shanbhag). Nevertheless, the bookshop seems quite popular, especially among the old-timers.