F#$% the scousers, I'll walk alone

It’s a really nice experience travelling on your own. But staying at a place for a while is something different, especially if you had something important coming up soon. As such times, the pressure gets to you. It’s just you, the butterflies in your stomach and the beat of your heart nearly cracking your ribs open. Of course, writing can help. Staying alone has been something that I wanted to do for a long time. Now that I’m here, it’s not as rosy as it sounds.

Sure it’s all good when you are roaming the streets, with all the time in the world. Time can turn against you if you are alone in a room chewing your fingernails. Time just seemed to stand still the night before. It then began to go on fast forward on the day of the quiz. I took my mind off things by watching a chick-flick marathon on TV (27 Dresses was ok-ok, while Brittany Murphy was damn cute in Uptown Girls) The hands of the clock finally aligned themselves at that angle which said that it was finally time for what I had originally come here for. We were cabbed off (as opposed to carted off) to the venue. I found myself in a room with nine others who were to be my opponents for the evening. The shoot was scheduled for 530pm on the 19^th , it started promptly at 0000hrs on the 20^th. (Another night quiz…YEAH!! I thank the NITs and IIT-M for all the all nighters that they so proudly pull off year after year) The only thing lacking was some good ‘ol fuel (I know where the apostrophe is, yes).

Once the quiz got over, I got shutter happy and got myself a few snaps with the God of quizzing, Siddhartha Basu himself. I cannot express that feeling in words. Let’s just say elation is a gross understatement. Those moments were the ones that I dreamt of when I was a 12 year old watching colleges battle it out in University Challenge and watching perspiring aspirants take the daunting black chair in Mastermind India.

I had a flight to catch quite early the next day, and true to my tradition I was again 2 hours early for my flight back home. The Delhi airport waiting area is magnificent. I spent all my time gazing out at planes taxiing down to a halt. The late nighter coupled with the early flight meant that sleep was a luxury more than anything else. I did however manage to catch 20 or so winks on the plane back home. At those times when I couldn’t sleep, well I wrote this post.