Parnab Mukherjee is currently India’s most famous college quizmaster. Quizzers allege he is also the most arbitrary and fudges questions.

If you ever quizzed or did some theatre in Delhi or Mumbai in the late 90s and beyond, one name you couldn’t have missed would be that of a certain Parnab Mukherjee (no relation to India's defence minister). He claims to be India's best live Quiz Master (QM) with an experience of conducting over 600 quizzes all over the country. He has been a regular feature at quizzes at NITIE, NMIMS, IIT Kanpur and IIT KGP and almost all the north campus colleges of Delhi University.

To say he is popular with audiences would be an understatement. He is famous as the guy who does entire quizzes from memory alone, without a single cue card. However, of late, hard core quizzers have not been too happy. Most of them, anyhow. They feel that he fudges questions, gives promiscuous answers to the same questions and 'favours' certain teams and people on stage. Also, that the people winning the quizzes remains the same, just the positions differ from quiz to quiz.

At Parnab's quizzes, those who have won national championships such as Business Today's Acumen and Tata Crucible struggle while those who have never made a mark at such events invariably qualify. They feel that with a
quizmaster like him, who doesn't use cue cards, you can't call it 'luck of the draw'. He can handpick questions for you as and when he wishes.

What's more,...

there is no consistency in his quizzes. Take his "Any topic under the sun", where quizzers "pick their poison" or pet topic, so to speak. It is hard to believe that he can pull out of memory questions under ANY topic under the sun. Even BBC's Mastermind quiz asks participants to submit their topics in advance and comes up with questions after due research. Rather than admit he knows nothing about a topic, say quizzers, Parnab will invent some zquestions.

Generally quizzers are good natured, competitive people, who prepare themselves for quizzes a la Rocky for his fights. What you can't prepare yourself for is fictitious questions.

Unfortunately, none of them is willing to go on record and air their grievance. Parnab is just 'too big', they say. He will victimise us at every quiz we go to. However veteran quizzer Gaurav Sabnis, (both in his COEP and IIM Lucknow days)state unequivocally,"Parnab's quizzes are full of wrong facts. Actually, the facts are concocted to make them sound interesting. “

He adds, “Maybe a few years ago, he could get away with it but in the Google-age, when any fact verification is just a mouse-click away, both Parnab's questions and his self-proclaimed accomplishments are exposed as straight-faced lies." Watch this space for more.

Parnab’s PHEKU FACTS
Answers to dubious questions asked by him in leading quizzes

- Earl Warren himself played Earl Warren in Oliver Stone's JFK.
- Jo waada kiya from Taj Mahal is the national anthem of Sandwich Islands (a non existent country)
-...

Eminem and Stephen Hawking had uncredited cameos in Martin Scorcese's "What's eating Gilbert Grape".
- Alyque Padamsee won a BAFTA award for his role as Jinnah in Gandhi.
- Deepak Chopra (born:1947) & Sushmita Sen both went to DPS R K Puram (started 1972).