We’ve all had our share of embarrassing stories that haunt us for some time, and then they turn into hilarious incidents of our past. Like this story. I’m not sure whether it’s interesting enough for a you to waste your time on, but it’s one of the most ambitious, creative, and juvenile thing I might have ever done in my entire life. And it involves the four popats.
We were in college, in our teens and neither of us had any sizeable bank balance. Someone, I can’t remember who, had the bright idea of organising a basketball tournament that would bring us unimaginable riches. And so it began.
Word was that the Sporting Authority of India, and that of Goa, granted 2 lacs each for major sporting events. However, the event had to be sanctioned by the head of the association in Goa, who was believed to be a corrupt official. If he approved the event, he wanted the grant money all to himself. Once we had his approval in this ‘official’ event however, sponsors would fall at our feet, offering anywhere from a lac or two each. By our calculations, four sponsors would result in around ~6 lacs gross income. Are you feeling the stupidity already or do I still need to continue? I’ll continue. By our baseless calculations, we’d spend about 3 lacs on the event, including the venue, teams, refreshments, all that, and have three lacs to split between the four of us. That’s 1.5 lacs in the hands of a fucking teenager!
We were of course giddy already, and decided to push forward. Bling was the basketball expert; Lion, the event management expert; Lingford, the muscle (well no one knew what else he was good at); and I was in charge of the graphics for all kinds of materials.
We made a swanky Keynote slideshow presentation on the iBook. I still have it, but it’s too embarrassing to share.
Sponsors of course wouldn’t just send money into our personal accounts. So we approached a bank, and found out details on how to open a business account. Spent half a day drafting the memorandum, minutes, and rules, and all that sh.it. Note that this was supposed to be our ‘first event’; we were already dreaming of hitting international in the next few months. There wasn’t even an ‘if’ involved! The name of our company was “Quadz Entertainment”—four, quad, get it?— and I did a logo which you can see below.
We approached the Head of the Goa authority in a secret place, who was totally wowed by the presentation on the ‘Apple’, and immediately signed and stamped the incomplete sheets. That was the difficult part, and we did it without even breaking a sweat! We could almost smell the dirty notes flying out of our overflowing cash bags.
Overjoyed, we decided to approach the sponsors. And it was only then that the cold cruel bitch named reality showed up. No one wanted to give us money! The liquor guys (who we wanted for the post-party) offered some booze in return for the prime spot. The beverages people wanted to give us 10k. We didn’t have the contact info for sports apparel companies. Our faces fell inside. It’s a good thing no one drew a line graph of our enthusiasm levels during this thing.
It fizzled down quick. Our enthusiasm died down. We stopped speaking about it. Sometimes someone would mention ‘quadz’, and we’d share a nervous chuckle (trying to hide the shame from within). We have of course outgrown this and pour generous laughter towards the joke that was Quadz.
Do I regret doing it? Hell no! Was one of the most intense, creative, and serious periods of my life, where for a week or two I suddenly felt grown up [where otherwise armpit farts amuse me]. We had all kinds of meetings, discussed things in secret because we didn’t want anyone getting wind of our brilliant idea, and planned on what we’d do once we got the cash in hand. The beauty of this venture, was that not that we’d get cash where we didn’t have any, but that we didn’t need any of that cash [I speak for myself]. That’s what you get when four idiots, with absolutely no responsibility whatsoever, no pressure to succeed, start searching for pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
No worries though, I’m back to being a stupid village idiot now.
