How Mumbai’s quizzing culture is evolving as more women enter the door

Every time Sania Narulkar blurts out the correct answer to a quiz question, it makes her extremely happy. "It is like being able to land a piece of crumpled paper bang in the centre of a waste basket across the room. It is useless in the real world but so very satisfying," expresses the Mumbaikar, who is one of many quizzers in Mumbai to enjoy the activity and be a part of the community. She also happens to be one among many members of the Mumbai Quiz Club, which has existed in the city for easily more than a decade.

Interestingly, they are one of the clubs that actively host quiz shows and thrive off not only getting the correct answers but also crafting intelligent questions to puzzle their opponent. They make it a point to meet at Rajyog restaurant in the by-lanes of Bandra East every Sunday to participate in quizzes that range on a variety of topics including science, literature and pop culture. Mind you, this venue isn't equipped with a screen, so the group makes a makeshift screen fashioned out of a tablecloth stuck with double-sided tape to the roof, says Narulkar.

Like many other sub-cultures in Mumbai including surfing, skateboarding, slacklining, hula hooping and belly dancing, the city also boasts of the quizzing community that has a variety of different groups that congregate to go full nerd mode or simply unwind with a mug of beer while they catch up with friends to quiz. Even as some of them are serious and passionate about quizzing, others are enthusiasts, and do it out of the pure motive of recreation.

Turn of the tide
Interestingly, Narulkar joined the tribe in the city in 2019 after a friend of hers introduced the Mumbaikar to the club, and she hasn't looked back since then. "I was interested in quizzing, but I was never in a place where I could get into the denser subcultures like Mumbai, Chennai, or Bengaluru but once I moved to Mumbai, I discovered the BQC," adds the sales and marketing professional, who not only loves quizzing but also becoming a quizmaster when the opportunity presents itself. The Mumbaikar is usually a quizmaster at the Mumbai Quiz Festival and took the reins at the recently concluded Kolkata International Quiz Festival. "I also write questions for ZQL, a popular online quiz league with more than 350 participants across the world," she adds.

Narulkar also happens to be one among a growing number of women joining the club and being an active part of the quizzing world in India. At the last meet, she was one among 12 women who were a part of the group of 40 quizzers who met to showcase their skills. "This group also included a 10-year-old girl. The number used to be 2-3 women a few years ago," she adds for comparison.

She further explains, "The biggest requirement to be an engaged quizzer is the luxury of time. Be it reading and learning about things that have little practical relevance to one's day job or be it attending quizzes around the city and the country. Women don't have that luxury more often than not." Additionally, Narulkar says the fact that quizzing for fun in the larger part is not rewarding in the monetary sense may dissuade people from joining the community. "What keeps people coming back is the social aspect of hanging out with like-minded people who find random facts fascinating. Understandably it is more difficult for a new woman quizzer to break into this social structure than a male quizzer given the gender composition of the old guard, but things are changing now," she shares.

Quizzing online
With a friendly day-time atmosphere and the meetups held in a family bar and restaurant, more people are comfortable and encouraged to participate regularly. The fact that there is a mix of old and new participants in every team is also what makes the social gathering a fun aspect while not being intimidated by the experts. "The other factor that has contributed to increased women's participation is the proliferation of online quizzes during the pandemic (a mix of competitive and non -competitive variety) where the challenges of time and distance that affect women disproportionately are minimised. Since one can participate in these quizzes from home, the intimidation of a strange space full of strangers who all seem to know each other also reduces significantly," she adds.

Being a part of the Bombay Quiz Club for the last 15 years, even Abhinav Dasgupta has seen the shift. Being a quizzer himself for close to two decades, Dasgupta was also the president of the Quiz Club in St Stephen's College in Delhi and then when he moved to Mumbai in 2009, it was like the quizzers found him and it didn't take long for him to join the Bombay Quiz Club. Such is his love for quizzing, that the Mumbaikar even met his wife in one of the quiz competitions he attended in Pune many years ago. "The male engineers have given way for more women in quizzing than there ever was," he explains, adding, "The Covid-19 pandemic also made a lot of quizzing go online and the formats changed. While we continue with our sessions in-person, the explosion of online formats is continuing."

Dasgupta goes on to explain the MIMIR format that has become popular. The Mumbaikar, who originally hails from Kolkata, was part of the team that started the first one called FundaesLiga Quiz League. He adds, "There has also been an explosion of friendly MIMIRs where people get in to play friendly games. You can play a game in half an hour, and some people are quizzing 24x7 in the middle of the workday when they take a break." This explosion has also helped take quizzing to a larger audience, who aren't able to meet people in person, as they can easily play it from the comfort of their homes. "These people are those that you haven't met in real life but are incredible quizzers, and are in Mumbai too. So, online and in-person quizzing are healthily co-existing," he adds. Dasgupta has come from Pune, where he was last weekend quizzing, and before that, it was in Kolkata for the Kolkata International Quiz Festival too.

Making quiz fun and non-competitive
Being one of quite a few active venues in Mumbai, Doolally Taproom has been hosting quiz nights at their three outlets in the city for close to a decade, and in fact, first started in Pune in 2014. With a mix of trivia and quizzes, they created a unique experience over the years, where you don't have to be an expert but simply come and enjoy the process of trying to figure out the answer while also meeting like-minded individuals. The craft beer outlet conducts them with the help of quizmasters J Ramanand, who won Mastermind and was a KBC expert, as well as B V Harish from Thinq2win, as they deep dive into the world of trivia while discovering something new every time. Today, they also work with India Wants To Know, a quiz company, to create the questions better and in turn create an exciting evening.

Tresha Guha, chief experience officer at Doolally Taproom, explains, "Since 2014, we have hosted over 1,000 quizzes consistently every Wednesday at our taprooms in Andheri, Khar, Thane and Pune. We also host it every Friday online on Twitter. In both quizzes, we aim to create an easy-going, casual quiz that focuses on just one thing: the questions."

Over time, they have seen quite the evolution in the quizzing culture in Mumbai, as Narulkar says, it has not only grown offline but more online, and that shows how it is thriving. "While earlier quizzing was considerably difficult to access, our main aim was to make it accessible, casual and very non-competitive. Take the edge off quizzing. This helped a lot of non-quizzers feel confident enough to raise their hands and attempt to answer the question," adds Guha, while highlighting how they also managed to create a day-long quizzing festival called Qtopia. While they say there are about 300 people who join them online every week, there are 500 people who make a beeline to the outlets every Wednesday.

Evolving nature of subjects
Exploring a wide variety of subjects and even hosting thematic quiz nights like one about the movies, if the Oscars are around something most people like. Guha adds, "We usually split the pub quiz into sections so there's maximum participation and maximum tomfoolery. The quiz includes topics that range from sports, film, technology, business, lifestyle, music and anything under the sun. We have explored themes such as FRIENDS, The Office, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things and Harry Potter too." The pub also takes it a step further by collaborating with merchandise companies to give out T-shirts, pins, badges and more to people.

With everybody jumping on the pop culture wagon due to the Internet, Dasgupta says the change in the topics has been significant over the years. "Earlier, it used to be a lot of male engineers quizzing so sports, Quentin Tarantino movies and classic rock music used to be the themes, but that has nicely diversified." However, he says, these days you get a lot of questions about art and literature, and with the generations changing, there are a lot of video game questions too. "There are also a lot of Taylor Swift questions asked, and because of that we want to officially retire a lot of Taylor Swift questions," he jokes.

The Mumbaikar attributes the different range of topics to the glut of information available on the Internet compared to earlier, people are also becoming open to asking diverse questions and that can even be on memes and social media. It is an exciting time for the 37-year-old and other quizzers in the city as they are busy preparing for the 12th edition of the Mumbai Quiz Festival. It is all set to take place on March 16 and 17 at the Nehru Centre in Worli, and Dasgupta believes every enthusiast should attend it because the more the merrier, and what better way to meet like-minded quizzers than this.