I am quite good at remember song lyrics. And songs that I have heard a long time back and haven’t since then. But when I hear the first few notes of the song, it all comes rushing back to me. Just like that, a light bulb switches on inside my brain and I remember. I am good at remembering trivia; I was very good at general knowledge quizzes and competitions. Country capitals and stuff like that.

Movies too – an obscure movie will come on and I’ll stun people by remember which movie it is and what the scene is about to enfold. Not just English movies but Malayalam movies too, ones that I barely watched out of the corner of my eye, as other watched and I read a book in the same room. My relatives always are stunned by that. I’ll remember dialogues and comments in the movies as well. Old movies from the 70s and the 80s too.

I used to love playing these fun quiz competitions that we used to have in the family and enjoyed the ribbing and the funny wrong answers. When I in NIIT I entered a competition for 2 member teams and we won 3rd prize, despite the fact that my partner had to back out and I got a random guy I knew to join me on the stage! Still 3rd place was not bad, considering that my partner knew almost nothing and was only vaguely interested in the competition.

Funny incident from that quiz contest way back in 1999. The quiz master was the person who ran the institute, a very distinguished & refined gentleman and well traveled. And the question that was passed to us was “What is a female cat called?” the answer is “queen” or “molly” and either would have given us 3 points and possible 2nd place. Neither me nor my partner knew the answer and we scratched our heads and finally just to give an answer I said “Pussycat?” Rather innocently too I must mention, I didn’t think too much before answering. The decent, distinguished gentleman looked at me, smiled and said “Good answer but no”.

Get it? I was shocked at what he thought that I meant but who has the dirty mind, me or him?