One small step for quizzing in India, one bigass leap for Team#9
Eight years ago, on a Thursday evening, I was sipping rum and coke at Koramangala club in Bangalore. I was hanging out with friends, doing something I truly loved. We were huddled around a laptop trying to guess the correct answer for “Why do some ultra-rich families in Dubai have to wait for three minutes longer than most people to break their fast during Ramzan?”*
There was no pressure to guess the right answer. Wrong answers and related facts led to welcome digression. Banter was in the air, conversation was always fun and enriching.
We spent time hanging out because we badly wanted to qualify for quizzes. This was our way of preparing and learning new, fascinating things about the world around us.
We called ourselves Team#9. The 8 teams that answered the most questions in the elimination round made it to the final. We frequently made it to the list of honourable mentions.
We weren’t allowed to answer 90% of the questions. Neither could most people who showed up to participate. Only the top 8 teams that made it to the finals had the opportunity.
Two years ago, on a Saturday morning, I was at Dialogues cafe in JP Nagar. I’d taken furniture and art from my house as decor for a set. We were shooting a pilot episode for India Wants to Know — India’s first panel quiz show. Friends, who we’re eternally grateful for, showed up as willing, enthusiastic participants.
“Why is Gunda among the top 100 movies on IMDB while Gunday was in the bottom 100?”**
We shot a ton of content on a wide range of subjects — cricket, food, culture, Bollywood and yes, even the Constitution of India, the CAA and the NRC. The laughter, the banter and the enthusiasm of our smart participants was infectious. The shoots went on for long each day. Our spirits were lifted by the kind people of Mohan Meakin in Solan.
Last year, I was at home on Friday, December 13th . We had our first few episodes of the show ready to drop on Youtube. It was hectic and exciting. Our trailer, which we released two days before had generated a fair amount of hype.
“What colourful character did Dharmendra play in India’s first feminist movie, Razia Sultan?”***
We released ten episodes for our first season. It was a labour of love that we are proud of. It took a lot from us to make things happen.
Research. Format. Script. Design. Screenplay. Shooting. Art direction. Set design. Lighting. Sound. Coercing friends to host and to participate. Re-takes. Make-up. Post-production. Editing. Captioning. Youtube. Social. Promotions. Love. Goodwill. Blood. Sweat. Toil.
Even the occasional tear or two.
In 2020, Covid happened. We switched from being India’s first panel quiz show to India’s biggest live quiz through #IWTKLive. We hosted 25 quizzes, donated INR 1 lakh+ to Covid relief and helped people (re)discover how much fun quizzing can be.
Today is another big day for us. We launched Season 1 on Southbay.Live at 6 PM. They liked our content and wanted us to be part of a larger network of shows that aims to shine the spotlight on various forms of story-telling (including panel quizzing).
We’re inspired by Rana Daggubati’s vision of making subculture content mainstream. We didn’t know he was a nerd, heavily into history, art, literature and pop-culture. We’re excited about what the future holds.
This is a small step for quizzing and a bigass leap for Team#9.
We wouldn’t be here if not for you.
Yes, you.
You’re reading this note because you’ve been directed to this link through gentle coercion from us or because someone else sent you a link. Thank you.
We’d also like to thank so many others who made these last few years kinda seem worthwhile.
For bravely going where no quiz show host in India had gone before — thank you PGK and Anu.
To our panelists — without you our show wouldn’t exist. (Remember — no coercion, completely on their own accord) . Thank you Rohit Chopra, Merin Mandanna, Anubha Upadhya, Naveen Swamy “Sammy”, Ramya Ramapriya, Sreyashi Dastidar, Amulya Shruti, Shilpa Anand, Vaidehi Murthy, Abhishek Madan, Ajit Bhaskar, Abhijit Shylanath, Berty Ashley, Akhila P, Gaurav Purohit, Harmeet Singh, Nitin Sundar, Siddharth Shenoy, Anuradha Santhanam, Vishnu Suresh, Manaswi Sankt Pauli Gundi, Rohit Akshay, Atulaa Krishnamurthy, Siddharth Madhavan.
To the wonderful people behind the scenes who shot, directed, edited our show and put the fancy intro animation (which is the best intro animation to any show we’ve ever made) — thank you Srinivas Revankar, Arun Christopher, Hasa and Mukund P.
To all of you who watched. To all those of you who watched again. To all those of you we nagged for feedback, asked you to watch and like and share and subscribe and press the goddamn bell icon. Thank you.
To all our amazing panelists who were part of #IWTKLive as we ran 25 online quizzes since the pandemic began. You wowed us with your wit and wisdom and shared so much on subjects you excelled in and were passionate about. Thank you Anusha Murthy, Shirin Mehrotra, Ajit Bhaskar, Meha Desai, Elizabeth Yorke, Vibhendu Tiwari, Berty Ashley, Sukhada Chaudhary, Sakshi Juneja, Joshua Muyiwa, Sukanya Varma, Rahul Desai, Aaliya Sultana Babi, Anuya Jakatdar, Aanchal Malhotra, Archana Garodia Gupta, Thejaswi Udupendra, Bobin James, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, Maalavikka Manoj, Amit Sinha, Keshava Guha, Amit Varma, Vikram Doctor, Aanchal Malhotra, Aseem Chhabra, Kasthuri Shankar, Vaidehi Murthy, Sucharita Tyagi, Shakti Shetty, Shreemi Verma, Aditi Mittal, Snehal Pradhan, Hemanth Rao and Gautam Bhimani, thank you.
To our fabulous hosts — you made our quizzes lively, you gave them character and made our audience feel special and feel welcome. Thank you Shreemi Verma, Mayank Shekhar, Ashish Shakya, Berty Ashley, Rohini Ramanathan, Meghavi Manjunath, Vivek Tejujaji, Dr. Navin and Joy-da. ❤
To our friends who volunteered their time for helping us with scoring and with questions — thank you Jignesh, Ankur, Amlan, Sneha, Sai Prasath, Akshay, Jai Rana, Abhimanyu, Anusha, Calvin a.k.a Frutzboi, Vedang and Sanjay Matthew.
To all those of you that showed up for our quiz, (Including the one which was pretty badly zoom-bombed, leading us to use a ticketing platform), to those that pounced, to those that gave us smart and funny answers to calm our frayed weekend nerves. For dialing in from Brussels to Bokaro, from Shimla to Seattle. Thank you.
To all those of you that gave us shoutouts on social, sent our links to your friends and kept telling us what you liked and more importantly telling us what you didn’t, thank you.
A special thanks to Vivek Tejujaji for making us fall in love with books again and to Shivani Goel who helped us think and design better.
Edit: To Satyajit Chetri a.k.a Beatzo (who we missed out on thanking before — apologies) for giving us his time, his thoughts and his music and book recommendations in addition to his support.
To our kind and patient video editors who bring you the best of #IWTKLive on our Youtube channel — thank you Yaminii and thank you Avaantika.
To the irreverent legend behind all our visuals — thank you Rabin J.
To Ananya and Anmol — no words. Without you we’d be lost at sea. Thank you. So. Much.
Yeah. That’s it. No big flourish while signing off. Just our eternal gratitude — Sai Ganesh (on behalf of Team#9)
* Those ultra rich families live high up atop the Burj Khalifa. The sun takes longer to set on the horizon because of its height and thus, they have to fast a few minutes longer than people at ground level. The rich have such a tough life.
** Gunda was considered “so bad it’s incredibly excellent” by many people, including some inspired souls at IIT KGP who began rating it highly on IMDB. This enduring tradition of rating Gunda on par with other less-amazing movies such as The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction spread far and wide, withstanding the test of time.
Gunday, on the other hand portrayed people from Bangladesh in poor light. They got angry and began downvoting it. Deservedly so.
*** In Razia Sultan, Dharmendra plays a slave. He keeps changing colour through the movie, sometimes appearing in blackface and sometimes being dyed a shade of green oddly reminiscent of Nickelodeon slime.