O’Brien and the art of quizzing

chandigarh: he admits, most candidly, that he trails behind sidhartha basu, brother derek o'brien and even amitabh bachchan when it comes to television quizzing (it's not my medium), but says equally confidently that when it comes to live quizzing, they probably fall in line after him. that's barry o'brien for you, one of india's most popular quizmasters, who along with father neil - probably india's first live quizmaster - still researches personally every question he asks.we work together, my father and i, on the questions, on our website - www.schoolcircle.com - and even on our books. they also share something else; the two along with barry's mother and his grandfather, have all been teachers. even now everything i do is related to school and i see this as an extension of classroom teaching. barry is involved with quizzes at school level, with authoring books (he's written an english reader series, a general knowledge series, and is writing one on grammar) and is also on the board of various schools. i'm also actively involved with my community - the anglo-indians - and the most important need of the hour is education, so even the social work i do is related to school. he also edits the telegraph in schools edition and disapproves of the word juggling if applied to him. juggling has negative connotations; i am passionately involved in all my work. as far as quizzing goes - probably the most visible of all his jobs -barry credits his father for pioneering quizzing in india (he conducted the country's first live quiz in kolkata in 1967), sidhartha basu for taking quizzing to the drawing room, brother derek for making it an industry and amitabh bachchan for taking it to the masses. before that it was restricted to the corporates, the schools, the informed people, especially since most of it was in english, but mr bachchan has taken it to housewife, to the masses. barry and his father have a huge bank of questions (more than 15,000) which, believe you me, is not fed into a computer but maintained in diaries, that too in random order. though being a quizmaster means having to be in the know about many subjects, barry's personal favourites are language, literature, sports, wildlife, and the ones he's not that interested in are science and new hindi movies. but it's like an education; i learn everyday and slowly an interest develops even in those fields you're not that interested in. what helps him greatly of course is reading. in our house no one ever commented on the colour of the curtains or asked opinions about the carpets; it was just books, books, books. but, barry specifies, not fiction but autobiographies, encyclopaedias, the origin of words, stuff like that. the family has a huge library at home, and probably owns every book ever published on quizzing. phew! and though barry prefers theme quizzes (he loves generating his own questions) and quizzes for adults, at heart he's always a children's man (being a teacher). you have to know how to say it and where to pitch it. geetika_bhandari@ indiatimes.com