MIND GAMES
The key
Aditya Rishi

FLASHBACK to March 6, 2004: Sheikh Chilli (to his friend Ghulam Badshah): "I’m missing my wife. I’m only a teacher, but my wife is a class apart." Ghulam Badshah: "Write her then." "A letter won’t do." "Then, send her something she would like, say a necklace." "I tried to send a necklace over the mail. It’s an expensive necklace and I know it’d bring her back, but I cannot mail it loose. It’ll have to go in a box. The post office sells boxes of all sizes. The boxes are equipped with multiple latches as well as locks and keys. You can duplicate keys and you can put more then one lock on the same box. The boxes cannot be broken, so the recipient must have a key to open the box. A key cannot be sent outside of a box, and an unlocked box cannot be mailed. How can I ever send her the valuable necklace?" "I get it. It’s the mail ego that stops you from bringing your wife back."

Many of you have been playing cupid in these six weeks and trying to bring the two together.

"He can parcel the gift and key seperately," says Amarjit Kaur of Ludhiana. "What if the necklace was sent in a box with a numbered lock? The number could, of course, be sent to the wife via sms or email or telephone or regular post etc.," says Sidharth Khanna, grade XI, Sacred Heart Convent Senior Secondary School, Sarabha Nagar, Ludhiana.

"To send the necklace, Sheikh Chilli puts the necklace in a proper box (available at post office) with at least two latches, and puts a lock on it. This box is mailed to the wife and she puts another lock on the box and mails it back to Sheikh Chilli. Sheikh chilli removes his lock and mails the box having his wife’s lock on once again to his wife, who can now open the lock she had earlier put and get the necklace," says Arvind Singh of 77-b, Model Town, Patiala.

"His wife on receiving the box will lock it again and keep the key and sent it again to Sheikh Chilli. Now he will open his lock and send the box again to wife, who will receive the box with her lock and receive her necklace on opening it," says Alok Mahajan of B.Tech (first year), CSE.

"Sheikhchiili sends the box with a lock and the wife sends it back by putting her lock on it. Sheikh Chilli, on receiving the box, opens his lock and sends the box back to his wife, who now opens it with the key she has and get the gift," says Rakesh Satija.

Here’s a refreshing approach to the problem: "Shiekh Chilli should discard the necklace, forget the mail delivery, carry a rose and walk upto the house of his wife and knock on it. The instant response will be:

Translated: The flower came hoding a flower, I became inflated and said: ‘This flower is not now required when the flower himself has come." I can understand that barring a few, a whole lotta you didn’t fully understand the problem, but this solution from Onkar Singh Riar of 26-C, Model Town, Phagwara, beats ‘em all. It might just solve the problem forever. Write at Mind Games, The Tribune, or aditya@tribunemail.com)