Dumb Charades

OK….This is a long one… so better be patient.

This is one thing I can say for sure, I am good at ...rather was... but I am not all that rusted either...

It all started in college when the thought to participate in a certain Dept fest coupled with the desire to know the gals from Eco Hons made us look up the posters and decide to participate in some event...
Quiz - "Naah... we'll never get past the prelims"
Debate - "What do u I know about economics anyway?"
AD-MAD - "What's that supposed to mean?" (We did actually try out that)
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Dumb Charades - Hmmmmm this sounds good... maybe we could try this one

So this is how the journey began.... lets not talk about how we fared in this particular event at that particular fest, coz its not worth mentioning, but yeah the Ad-Mad event got me a cool Rs 500/- ...

Conclusion: The Eco people are not at all economically challenged and more importantly picking up the game seemed a good option to supplement our pocket money(500 bucks in 1999 meant a hell lot more. I got all by books for the first year in less than 200)

The first DumbC that we won was at Miranda House Chem Soc fest in 2000. Yes I still remember the name "Rasayanika". It so happenned that P n me were out in North campus for some work n we saw their poster and decided to go for it... but the problem was that we were just 2.. a team of 3 was required and the organisers were pretty admant about it.. As neither P nor I knew anyone in Miranda we asked the organisers to get us a teammate...All set n done we finally managed to win our first DumbC... Three trophies with Miranda House written in bold at the bottom... I still have mine at my home, so does P ... Dunno about the random chick who was our teammate

We started taking it as a serious sport henceforth and decided to excel in it...
Top 1000 Movies of all times list was downloaded, Photocopies of the complete list of Classic books from British Council Library (thx to my membership which I won in another Radio contest)

Next came in a lot of other wins in Stephens, Hindu, Venky, Miranda(again!!), KMC, Gargi and a few more, both in dept and the main fests... Somehow we always had more luck in the girls colleges..The biggest competition used to come from proff colleges... The first crush came in the form of Rendezvous2000. After a series of wins I guess we got a bit bloated up and IIT happened just at the right time to jolt back us to our senses... we didnt even clear the prelims...partly because of my ignorance on who Riya Sen was (Mind u it was much before Style, Qayamat or that MMS clip happenend) hence could not enact something from which my temmates could guess....silenced we watched the whole game... congratulated the winners , which was a team from IIT, and came back.

P n I decided that practice was the only key and started doing it everywhere.. in between clas breaks, sometimes during the class as well.. in canteen, in the playfield, in the bus. Now in the bus people used to look at us with amused and sometimes pitiful look...now P n I used to travel on the same route and the busses predominantly consisted of people from ISBT getting back to their homes... simple folks whose expression often said "What a pity!! if only he could speak, he would not have to make all those faces to communicate to his friend" and the expression would soon change into "#$#@$%%$$%^%$^$^@$^" when I used to start talking to P...

A few more victories here n there and next year we were back at Rendezvous2001 to avenge our defeat...The team which one last year was again there n so were we and a few other teams ... the contest went close till the very end. With only one more sentence left to crack in the bidding round it was do or die for our team, suitable called "The Craters" in all the competitions, which was behind the defending champs... After much haggling I took the challenge to crack in 47 seconds the foll sentence "It's not that I am afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens." and the team from IIT was virtually celebrating their victory... With hands and feet going numb I took a 1 min break and thought out all the words carefully and the way in which I would do each one of them... Fortune favors the brave and we did win DumbC@Revdezvous2001 finally a target we had set for ourselves a year back had been achieved... Rendezvous2003 was also our year, and apart from that we won at AIIMS, MAMC, DCE n NSIT... BTW by this time we were pretty much acknowledged in the DumbC circle in Delhi and in NSIT we were offered a a wild card entry straight into the finals, as we hadn't reached the venue on time for the prelims... The team from IIT was like a failiar sight and there always would be the customary hi/hellos and then we would take positions in opposite corners...

The biggest challenge came in the form of Oasis2002@BITS Pilani where I was without my regular teammate P. By this time P n I had deveoped such a good understanding that it was like telepathy... nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbs, profanities, colors, animals, famnous personlities, shortcuts (which we used to call 'Hathoda'), the cheat codes (we had signs for all the alphabets which was almost impossible to catch ), rolling, phonetics... all was well etched in our memories and the synch was awesome...We always had a changing third team member ...so with one ex team member A and another random guy K we entered our team name for the DumbC events... Yet again "The Craters"...only that this time it looked more like our destination when the event got over...one full night i was explaing A n K the nuances of DumbC...finally we did manage to win the DumbC...The hindi one.. much to my surprise coz I thought we had no chance .. Firstly coz A didnt know the K Kha Ga of hindi cinema and secondly coz K was probably playing for the first time ever...We lost the english Dumb Charades in the finals... nevertheless the trophy from Pilani is def my fav one...(BTW A made it till the last 3 in the Mr Oasis and what happened on stage is a hilarious incident)

Apart from all the certificates and some petty cash, the finest things this game has taught me are:-

Theres always a first time"
If u try hard you will succeed" and most importantly
It feels GREAT to win"

If u think that I was bragging n blowing my own trumpet all the way then I would have to partly agree with you... After completing when I read it, it sounded the same way to me...Bad!