24 October 2013

Puzzle time

You are shown two identical bowls in a room – one of them containing 25 white marbles and the other containing 25 black marbles. The marbles are identical to each other other than the aspect of color, of course.
A blindfold person will be brought in to the room and asked to choose any bowl randomly and pick any one marble randomly from that bowl. If it is turns out to be a white marble, you will get a million dollars. If it turns out to be black you get nothing.
However, before the blindfolded person is brought in, you are allowed to mix up all the marbles and place any number of white and any number of black marbles in each bowl. Needless to say, all marbles have to be in one or the other bowl.
How would you place the marbles (meaning how many of which color marbles in which bowl) to give you the maximum chance of winning the million dollars?

(Remember to send me FB message instead of posting it on the Comments section. I will acknowledge you in the comments section if you get it right)

22 October 2013

The stars in our life go round and round..

Lit a fire and sat with Nikita outside as she quizzed me on her newly acquired knowledge of stars, colors of stars and the moon.
Forty years back, my dad used to sit out in the open sky in his “easy chair” (a cross between a lounge chair and a hammock) and I used to sit by him and ask him a million questions about the clear sky above.
I remember being very dissatisfied with his answer to my question “How many total stars are there”? – “Uncountable. There is no end”. I reckoned this being his tactic to shut me up. I had decided to grow up and someday actually count up all the stars!!
That never happened!!

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20 October 2013

Run in cold and fog…

Very very foggy morning. 41 degrees cold (5 degrees Centigrade). 8 in the morning on a Sunday. After the Saturday night Lakshmi Puja activities. Most Bengali can be located only under “lep”s (blankets) under such circumstances.
Except the Chalu-pas. 10 of them – including 2 junior runners – showed up with winter running gear sans any “monkey cap” ๐Ÿ™‚ Not counting Ashok-“warm-clothes-are-way-overrated”-Deb ๐Ÿ™‚

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19 October 2013

Good looking potato

Most of you who know me, also know very well that grocery shopping is clearly not one of my core competencies. I have rarely done it and I am totally clueless about the aisle layouts. Once in a blue moon, Sharmila will hand me a list of things to pick up. Typically, once in the store, I will look at the top of the list and then roam around the store looking for that item, listlessly ๐Ÿ™‚ Eventually, I will give up, call her up and then ask for instructions. She will remotely guide me to the aisle, I will find the item and then tell her “I have got it from here” before dropping the call.
Then I will see the next item on the list, again walk around the whole store completely confused where to find the item, call her back againโ€ฆ. and so on โ€ฆ till I have made as many calls as there are items on the list. It is the same story every single time.
So, these days, she tries to be very explicit in her instructions when she absolutely needs me to go to the grocery store.
This is the text message I got from her when I was out running an errand this morning.
The good news is, following her directions, I landed up in the potato section. Except there were lots and lots of potatoes. And I had no idea in God’s green earth when to deem a potato “good looking”. Frankly, they all looked rather unseemly to me ๐Ÿ™‚
As you must have guessed, a phone call ensuedโ€ฆ ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚

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19 October 2013

An evening of Nusrat songs..

Some incredible poetryโ€ฆ

“Jo puchha ke kis tarah hoti hai baarish / Jabeen se paseene ki boondein gira di,

Jo puchha ke kis tarah girti hai bijli / Nigahein milaaein – mila kar jhuka di

Jo puchha shab-o-roz milte hain kaise / To bhehre pe apne wo zulfein hata di

Jo puchha ke naghmon mein jaadu hai kaisa / To meethe takallum mein baatein suna di

Jo apni tamannon ka haal puchha / To jalti hui chand shamein bhujha di

Main kehta reh gaya khata-e-mohabbat ki achhi saaza di”

Need help from somebody who is more knowledgeable in Urdu than me but roughly I think it isโ€ฆ

When I asked her how does the rain fall / She let a few beads of sweat fall from her forehead

When I asked her how does the lightning strike / She looked at me, and then lowered her eyes

When I asked her how does the night and day come together / She slowly moved her hair away from her face

When I asked her about the magic in music / She whispered a sweet things in my ear

But when I asked her about my own wishes / She quickly snuffed out a few candles

And all I was left saying was, what a punishment this is, for the sin of loving!!

18 October 2013

Sindoor Khela

Browsing my Bengali friends’ updates on FB after coming back from India, I have come to the general conclusion that dousing your face with some red powder and posting it on FB is highly correlated with your friends finding you very beautiful ๐Ÿ™‚ I gotta try that sometime ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚