How-To Survive a Terror Quiz

 How-To Survive a Terror Quiz

 

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Trapped in a heavy traffic jam courtesy an impromptu political rally on Mount Road, I let my mind wander around to a weird question. What if I got caught in a terror attack? Would I be among the survivors when it was all over? Would I attempt something foolhardy like challenging them? Or would I do the wise thing and keep my head down till the real professionals got into the rescue act? If I was lined up to be shot, would i accept death with equanimity or would my knees start knocking at imminent death? 

The Nairobi Shopping Mall attacked by Terrorists

The Shoppers under attack by Al Shabab Terrorists

 The immediate provocation for this line of morbid thoughts was the Kenyan Shopping Mall terror attack where a terror group called Al Shabab which is loosely affiliated to Al Queda (remember them from the good old 9/11 days?) had attacked an up-market shopping mall and executed daytime shoppers for their consumerist lifestyle.....naah, I am just kidding, they only killed Jews, Christians and Hindus for being unbelievers. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you ask me, there must be easier ways to teach people the lesson about not indulging in retail therapy to ease emotional pains than putting a gun to their heads and making them swear off daytime shopping. 

Answer Or Die

As I sat there in the unmoving traffic, I indulged in every writer’s right to day dream- i pictured a fantasy about being trapped in such a shopping mall attack along with my group of friends. And i immediately came to the startling conclusion that the only one who was sure to survive the attack would be my friend Sylvian Patrick. Now, before you start imagining my friend Sylvian as one of those muscle bound action heroes like Sly Stallone or kick ass martial arts hero like Jean Claude VanDamme or a clone of Bruce Willis in the Diehard movies, let me clarify that his strongest weapon is his mind. The man is damn brilliant when it comes to general knowledge for he is a renowned quiz master and regularly conducts quizzes as a hobby. There is even a nasty rumor that he reads the editorials in the morning paper before he even opens Page-3 like us normal people do, to stare at starlets.

Bruce and Sylvian...the look-alike's

If you had read the newspapers carefully you would know that the Al Shabab terrorists who attacked the Kenyan Shopping Mall had shown themselves fans of TV quiz programs like Mastermind and KBC. They had conducted an impromptu quiz session to select people to kill by asking them general knowledge questions like "what is the name of Prophet Mohammed's mother?" Those who didn’t answer correctly (and within time) were shot dead while the lucky winners won the ultimate prize of - not being shot immediately. And that’s why I reasoned that Sylvian will Die-harder and survive the terrorist attack as he could come out guns, errrr, answers blazing. 

Sylvian and Me- at Beer Prong

That made me wonder at my how my other friends would perform in a similar life or death quiz. I guess a few of my other friends might know the answers to the Terror Quiz too (hmmm, i hate to boast- but I do move around in intellectual circles you know) but i am not sure about their performance in the Rapid-Fire round......with a, say a hundred AK-47 bullets being fired rapidly at them, will they beat the bell and scream the correct answers? I am not sure I could, for I think best when i am calm and collected and not being shot at by assorted terrorists screaming allahu akbar.

Finally i got to thinking of what if the tables were reversed? What if i got the terrorists to answer my quiz questions? i am sure i could make them sweat with questions like:

1) Name ALL the wives of Lord Krishna?

2) Name ALL the sons of ND Tiwari?

3) Name ALL the seats that the Congress party will win in the upcoming 2014 elections...Oh wait, this one is fairly easy and most people, including terrorists might get it right.

Anyway, by the end of my daydream i came to the conclusion that the only way I could survive such a terror quiz was to no, not take the easy way of brushing up my general knowledge but to form a killer team with intelligent teammates who can beat the buzzer and befuddle terrorists. Well, that’s my playbook to win a Terror Quiz. So what’s your game plan?