Stronger Lessons
“Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were
tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learned great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt,or dispute the passage with you?” — By Walt Whitman
***A nice little poem. Came across it while going through his collection randomly.
Solution!
Atlast, chessbase gave the solution for the puzzle I posted under “Chocolate,Coffee and Chess” post. Here it is:
“There are two surprising things about the solution to this puzzle. Firstly, although the position is symmetrical, the play leading up to it is anything but. Secondly, the ‘obvious’ sequence of moves leads to Black lacking a tempo move at the end of the sequence. Therefore Black has to make his tempo move earlier (see Black’s 6th move in the solution). Anyhow, by now you probably want to see the solution, so here it is: 1 a4 c6 2 a5 Qb6 3 axb6 axb6 4 Ra3 Rxa3 5 h4 Rb3 6 cxb3 h6 7 Qc2 h5 8 Qxc6 Nxc6 9 Nc3.”
I can’t believe that the h4-h5 moves were achieved in two steps and their main purpose was to initially pass the tempo from white to black and then from black to white. A very clever deception and counter-intuitive ofcourse, but yet possible to work out.
* Tempo – Normally referred to a single move. Suppose there are 3 places A,B and C , all inter-connected. You have to move from A to C and you do it in the following way: Move from A to B and then from B to C. Another person moves directly from A to C. Now this other person has gained one tempo over you.
(The definition is not strictly correct but yet the basic idea is the same.)
Monty Hall Problem
Warning: This post is a bit technical. 
I first came across this problem in the movie ‘21′ . Not paying much attention to it at that time, the problem came back to me later in some stroke of random thought. Heres a discussion of the problem along with my blabberings juxtaposed in between:
“You are on a gameshow. There are 3 doors, 2 of which have goats behind them and one of them has a car behind. Now as a participant of the show, you need to choose a door. Whats the probabilty of you picking up the door with the car?”
Easy huh! 1/3 . Anyone with a basic knowledge of probability could figure that out.
Now comes the twist:
“The host of the gameshow asks you to make your choice. After you have made your choice of the door, the host opens up one of the remaining doors out of the two and reveals a goat. Now the host asks you whether you would like to change your choice and choose the other unopened door. So, the million dollar question here is that should you stick to your original choice, change your choice to the other door or it doesn’t make any difference?”
Intuitively, you would say, hell! It doesn’t make any difference. There are 2 doors, one of which has a car and the other has a goat. Whatever I choose will anyways give me the probability of winning the car equal to 1/2. So switch my choice or not, it doesn’t matter.
But here’s where you are mistaken. Here’s where the climax of the film begins. Here’s where the hero rescues the heroine away from the evil clutches of the villain. And here’s where I attempt to explain a bit.
First of all, to drive you away from your intuition, consider a gameshow where there are 2 doors, one with a car and the other with a goat. You are asked to pick up a door by the host. Whats your probability of winning the car? “1/2″ , you would say and thats right. But is this situation identical to the situation(2 unopened doors, 1 opened door with a goat and you in a dilemma to switch your choice or not) as mentioned previously?
No , its not. Its not and its not simply because its not.
Why?
Well, lets say your making a choice in case of 3 doors is an Event A which gives you 1/3 chance of winning the car and 2/3 chance of winning a goat. Now your deciding to switch your choice or not(after one door is opened revealing a goat) and thus, finalizing a door out of the remaining two is a decision which I label as Event B. The two events , mark my words , the two events are not exclusive(as shown in diagram).
Event A –> Event B –> Car or Goat?
Event A gives rise to the situation in Event B. The events are not independent of each other. And now you would ask, how?
Ahem! Had these events occurred on two separate gameshows ie only Event A in the gameshow with 3 doors and only Event B(finalizing a door out of two!) in the show with the 2 doors, these events would have been mutually exclusive whatsoever. However, such is not the case.
“So what?” , says you…
Ok. So here’s my pie for you. When you made a choice for one door in Event A, you have submitted yourself to 2/3 chance of winning a goat and 1/3 chance of winning a car. In simple terms, out of 3000 tries, you’d pick up the door with the goat 2000 times and the door with the car 1000 times.
Now, a door revealing a goat has been opened. Consider for a moment what does that mean for you! If you switch your choice now, all the cases of 2000 times where you have picked up a goat would turn into the winning ones. Why? grrr … simply because you chose a door with the goat in those 2000 attempts(which locks one door with the goat) , the host has opened up a door with the goat(which locks the second door with goat) and so, the third door is the one with the car.
So dudes n dudettes, isn’t it a bit clear now to switch your choice because you manage to convert those 2000 attempts into success , thus putting the probability of picking the car to 2/3.
“And what about the 1000 attempts amongst the 3000 where you manage to choose the door with the car in the first hit and then decide to switch your choice?”, says you.
Well, they all turn into events of failure putting your probability of failure to win the car equal 1/3.
But do you see the DIFFERENCE now?
When you decide to make a switch, your probability of success equals 2/3 while that of failure is 1/3.
When you do not make a switch, your probability of success is 1/3 and probability of failure is 2/3(Simple probability case as discussed at the very begining!)
Hence, my friends, switch , switch and switch your choice if given a chance on such a gameshow!
*I assumed all the while you wanted to win a car in the show. Ofcourse, if your preference is a goat, please do not switch your choice. 
Henry David Thoreau
“So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.”
– A small extract from the essay derived from the lecture “What Shall It Profit?”, which Thoreau first delivered on 6 December 1854, at Railroad Hall in Providence Rhode Island. He delivered it several times over the next two years, and edited it for publication before he died in 1862. It was first published in the October 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly ( Volume 12, Issue 71, pp. 484–495.) where it was given its modern title.
- Source of complete lecture: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Life_Without_Principle
- Aforesaid opinions are not my personal views.
- As again, the above document was given to me by my friend, the same one who had the ‘Parable or Paradox’ video on her gtalk status.
Parable or Paradox!
And It Makes Me Wonder!
A few days back , the following link was on the gtalk status of one of my friend …
Is it a parable or a paradox?
The Alchemist
No , I didn’t read this book recently.
I read it during the final year of my college and ‘I DIDN”T LIKE IT’. At that time, two of my wingmates had read this book and appreciated it highly. So much so that I remember going in search for it from room to room in our wing and finally managing to borrow it for a few hours.
However, when I finished reading it, I didn’t quite understand why everyone was lavishing hyperbolic praises on the book. To me, the idea in the book which the author was trying to convey appeared hazy and unclear. The twisted plot which finally led to the ‘follow-your-dreams’ concept didn’t seem to be appealing. Reading it was like walking along a foggy path , not able to see anything and yet believing that in the end , as if by a miracle , the fog will clear up and bright sunshine will soon follow(enlightment!) just because everyone who has walked along this path has said so.
Remember the days when we tried to solve problems while preparing for competitive exams. At the time, we would appreciate a problem if it was complex and our teachers would painstakingly give us a two page solution that only a few of us could have comprehended. And yet such problems never turned out in exams which would test us with fundamental problems having simple, elegant solutions. My point here is that there is a tendency amongst most of us to appreciate what is hard to understand even though it might or might not be important/relevant to the context or even if there is a simpler way to look at things. This book felt to me like a similar two-page-solution problem to which most of us were in awe at.
If I have to recommend an alternative to reading this book, I’d rather say Richard Bach’s ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’ which has a clear plot with a similar yet more clear message to convey or Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ which is more towards the realistic side with a easy-to-understand message.
However, even with all my rantings, I am aware that I might be missing out something that has made me not to appreciate this book. And thus, keeping an open mind, I invite you to explain my missing pie if you are one of those who likes and understands ‘The Alchemist’.
Chocolate, Coffee and Chess!
Its 3:30am in the morning as I am writing this. A couple of hours back, I was peacefully sleeping on my bed when the frantic knocking on the door of my room woke me up. The results of one of the most important and tough exams in our country are out and my friend(who woke me up!) has literally ‘phod diya’. Congrats buddy!
Now whats all this got to do with chocolate, coffee or chess. Chocolate because I am hungry and it would kick up the glucose supply in addition to satiating my hunger. Coffee I would love to have at this time(old habits of having it around 2am in college days haven’t faded out yet). Chess… its the hard part to explain here. Well , there are ways to go off to sleep like counting sheep jumping over the fence or simply counting numbers till you fall asleep etc. I guess all these utilize the same concept of putting the brain to use until it gets bored and sleeps off voluntarily rather than putting the neurons to work.
So heres a chess puzzle taken from chessbase site:
The position is as shown in the diagram. Now all you got to do is figure out a set of valid legal moves so that such a position is reached in White’s ninth move. I remember trying it a few days back without any success(I don’t even have a board).
Anyways, since I have no hope of getting within reachable limits of either chocolate or coffee, I’d give it a shot till I fall asleep.
By the way, if you happen to find the solution, do tell me.
Nick Drake
Nick Drake
I have been listening to his music for quite a while now. I am not going to write a biographical article about him but rather tell you a few of my interpretations about him and his music.
Nick Drake was an unrecognized genius in his own times(late 60s period). His music and lyrics were way ahead of that period of Rock n Roll era. Probably, thats one of the reasons why he never got his due because people were crazy about Rock n Roll stuff in that period (Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin , Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix etc).
His music has a pure almost innocent quality in it. His songs lyrics are subtle but have great depths. Often, they reflect his own life and the lives around him as he saw them. And not to mention his voice which I can describe as haunting, reflecting and having a rare quality to spring up any mood with utmost ease.
The only two bands which come to my mind when listening to his songs are Pink Floyd and Nirvana. However, Drake was an individual songwriter, musician(guitar) and gave vocals in his own songs. A dream combination I can think of would be Nick Drake and Roger Waters(Pink Floyd) at vocals and Dave Gilmour(Pink Floyd) at the guitars.
Sadly, Drake’s genius was never recognized during his times. However, the past few decades have seen a cult growing over his music (owing largely to a television commercial in 2000s which used one of the soundtracks of his album). Its good to see his music being appreciated and recognized in our times. You can even hear some of the soundtracks in the film ‘Serendipity’.
One of the incidents that I would quote and his manager reveals in a documentary(‘A skin too few – youtube’) on him is where Drake comes to him, looking bad and dirty and asks him: ‘Everybody tells me I am great but I am broke. Why?’. In short, it was the manifestation of anger of a musician who thought he had something to give to the world by his music, yet felt like he failed in doing so. It was probably this feeling that saw him become isolated and recluse in his last years when he had given up on the world and rejected it.
Nick Drake passed away in 1974 at the age of 26 having recorded three albums in his lifetime. He is survived by his music which will always keep him alive in the memories of his fans.
*Here’s a list of some soundtracks to hear:
Time has told me, Cello Song, Fruit Tree, Northern Sky, Black Eyed Dog, Fly, Hazey Jane I and II, Pink Moon …
Measuring the summers day – II
“This way Sir” , the guard said pointing to the backstage area.
By now, Victor had calmed himself down quite a bit. He was purposely taking slow, measured steps towards the auctioneer, thinking hard at each step, trying to decide how could he best explain his situation to the auctioneer.
“Well, I could say , very well Sir … in a fit of I-don’t-know-what-foolishness , I called out seven even though I didn’t intend to , and the painting was sold to me thus” , Victor thought.
However, something inside warned him that this is not the right time to follow the ideals of honesty and moral uprightness and he better not come up with such a lame excuse. His exterior calm was getting a bit perturbed now as he couldn’t figure out what to say and so as our Victor approached the auctioneer, his mind was in a state of complete blank.
“Congratulations Sir, very nice choice of painting, I must admit. Its worth a fortune and you rather got it cheap.”, said the person wearing the armani auit and gold rimmed spectacles who was the auctioneer.
“Ah! Well , if its so nice, would you buy it from me?” , thought Victor, almost tempted to say the words out loud.
“er … thanks! but there is a little problem …”, said he.
“I know what you are thinking Sir , the painting being susceptible to damage, how would you possibly take it away? Do not worry Sir, to the least in this regard, as we will ensure the safe delivery of the painting at your address. Also, we have got all our auction items insured against any damage until we deliver them to you safely.”, said the auctioneer.
“Painting … insured … what if it gets damaged on the way … they pay me back the amount … if I could make that happen” , the black angel flying on Victor’s head slowly whispered.
“Damn! I am getting too panicky here. Let me just explain my situation to him. I am sure there’s a way out of this without any trouble”, whispered the white angel cautiously in his ear.
“There’s no way out without getting into the legal trouble, they will sue you as well”, said the black angel.
“Just tell him you can’t afford the painting, plain and simple. Tell the truth.”, said the flying white angel.
“Honesty hardly works now days! You are in deep waters, do as I say and you come out fine”, opposed the black angel.
“You know whats right and whats not , don’t you , Victor?” , softly said the white angel.
“Damn! Get away both of you.” , cried out Victor in a loud voice surprising the auctioneer.
“Is something the matter, Sir” , the auctioneer said in a cautious voice now.
“Ah! Well , its just that …” , he was cut short in mid of his sentence by a resounding sweet voice.
“Hi, I am Sophia” , said she extending a hand towards Victor.
Victor had by now realized what was coming. With a pang of nervousness,he slowly turned his head towards her directly looking in the crystal blue eyes in which he had almost drowned a while ago.With great strength by which large mountains have been moved in the history of mankind, he slowly extended his hand towards her.
“Hi , I am Victor” , said he.
“I have a favour to ask. I am the manager at a local art gallery here and as a part of our annual exhibition show, I would love to have that painting at our gallery. We would like to buy the painting from you”, said she shaking his hand.
For a moment, Victor was stunned. He summed up his life in the past four moments he could so distinctly recollect … being bored , then drowning , landing himself in a soup and finally being pulled out of it , all so unexpectedly. Ofcourse, a part of him was delighted at meeting her again and another part relieved at the feeling that the messy situation he was in could now be resolved. He started thinking about the poetic verse he had figured out and realized to his horror that he had lost it again. His face showed signs of being perplexed as he awkwardly stood silent , trying to remember the verse.
“Well, ofcourse , we could offer you a higher price than seven thousand dollars, if you would not like to sell it” , said Sophia mistakingly assuming Victor’s perplexed face as a sign of his hesitancy to sell the painting.
“No. Seven thousand is just fine. Infact, you could take over from here and get the painting from them”, said Victor in a flash as he sensed that the offer could also slip away any moment. The poetic verse , he decided, could be postponed for later.
“Thanks.” , she said with an enchanting smile.
“Could you wait for me near the exit. I have a word or two to talk to you” , she added in an enigmatic tone.
“Sure thing!” , were the only words Victor could utter, totally dazed by the events of the afternoon.
As she walked away with the auctioneer to settle out the paperwork for the painting, Victor appeared thoughroughly lost and confused. He didn’t know what to make out of the events of the afternoon. He felt as if the past few moments had been a hazy reality over which he had no control. He was a puppet in a drama and someone else seemed to be pulling the strings.
“Well , I’ll just wait at the door for her” , thought Victor.
As he slowly moved towards the door, he tried recollecting that verse again. He had an inkling that he might need the verse for the near future. But as hard as he did try, the verse eluded him.
“Ah! Just when you need it, its not there … It was the setting , the environment that got me the verse … It won’t come back now ” , cried the voices in his head.
He didn’t know the time through which he stood by the door waiting for her, trying to remember the verse and finding a logical explanation of the bizarre sequence of events that had unfolded at the afternoon. He was so much engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t notice her approaching.
“Hey there” , said she with a smile.
“Hey” , said he trying to converse in a normal tone
“Take this and read it when I am not there” , said she enigmatically handing him a folded piece of paper.
Of all the events that had opened up over the afternoon, the last thing that Victor needed was another dose of some kind of cryptic message.
“Well”, he said taking the piece of paper, “I had a question to ask. Why were you looking at me so intensely during the auction?”
“Was I … no, I wasn’t”, said she a bit confused.
“But you were looking at my direction, weren’t you?” , said he
“Yes , I had got a pain in my neck. I was just stretching out a bit”, replied Sophia
Victor felt as if he had been hit by a lightening bolt. Yet, however deeply he might have been affected, he stayed calm and unperturbed. Probably, by now, he had realised that anything normal would be too bizarre an explanation for today. He felt he was in harmony with the surroundings and events and seemed to perfectly accept any not so rational explanations with utmost ease.
“By the way, our exhibition is tomorrow evening. I’ll be there around. Drop in if you find time”, said she giving him her card.
“I have got to rush now and make arrangements for tomorrow. Thanks to you for agreeing to sell us the painting” , added she.
Victor could only produce a weak smile in return. He told her he would try to make to the exhibition tomorrow and meet her.
And so, they exchanged goodbyes and our Victor returned home, thouroughly demolished.
Clutching his forehead, Victor laid down on his home couch. The afternoon had been surreal. But he knew he would meet her tomorrow, talk to her about the events that had occurred from his perspective … and probably ask her out.
“Not such a boring afternoon afterall”, thought he with a smile and was about to slip under the covers for a quick nap when he remembered the unfolded piece of paper she had given him.
Taking out the paper from his pocket, he slowly opened it. He thought he knew what was written inside. As he was about to read it, he felt as if he knew what was coming next. With trembling hands holding the paper, he reluctantly moved his look over the scribblings in the black ink written on it. As he read it, his heart skipped a beat.
On the paper were written the following words:
“Describe it in seven words, when you meet me next!” …
The crystal blue eyes were staring at him from the little piece of paper and Victor felt like he was drowning again.
Measuring the summers day – I
Victor was comfortably seated in the chair inside the big auction hall. His eyes wandered lazily to the podium in front of him where a clean shaven man wearing gold rimmed spectacles and a armani suit was resounding a hammer on his desk. The hammer count had reached two and the eighteenth century painting up for the auction was due to be sold for six-thousand dollars at the next stroke of the hammer.
Victor yawned. He wasn’t particularly interested in this auction stuff. He wondered how on earth could he land at such a dull place on such a lazy sunday afternoon.
“Perhaps I would have been better off had I gone to catch some upcoming movie or just hung out with my friends at their place”, he thought.
He started cursing himself for the lousy idea of visiting the auction hall at the Town Center to kill time. He cursed his friends for not telling him how boring it was and he even cursed God for giving human beings the stupid intelligence to invent such a process as ‘auction’.
“Why do they have to make a big fuss about selling items in such a way. They should just put the items with their price tags on display and let the buyers decide. It would be so less boring that way … and quieter … maybe interesting …”. His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp pain in his neck.
“Ah! Well, God’s way of revenge by giving me a pain in the neck”, he thought. Little did he know that the Mighty power had a sense of sarcasm too. Turning his head towards right to stretch out his neck muscles a bit, he caught sight of a figure sitting two seats beside him. Under normal circumstances, Victor would have ignored the person and turned his head back carrying out his stretching excercise.
Yet, these were not normal circumstances as per Victor’s perceptions and for the following reasons(which he was able to think out later) …
First of all, the face was too strikingly beautiful to be ignored.However, what struck him more was the way in which she was looking at him. Her big blue innocent eyes were transfixed on his face as if penetrating and searching for something. For a moment, Victor felt like a living reflection in her watery eyes. He felt a sense of connection too.(Perhaps both of them were allies united against the common enemy of the boring auction unfolding before them or was it a moment of pure serendipity? For reasons not clear to this day, Victor never could find out why he felt that sense of connection!)
And then a strange thing happened. Victor suddenly felt a sense of drowning. His head was spinning or rather everything around him seemed to be revolving … the auction table , the hammer , the person with the gold rimmed spectacles , other people in the chairs … only she seemed to be fixed in her chair gazing at him with the same intensity as before. “Whats happening?”, Victor thought to himself. In a moment of sheer panic, he squeezed his eyes close and flinched them tightly to come back to senses once again. And when he opened his eyes, he was in for a surprise.
“Do you or do you not?” , she was asking him.
The sun was shining brightly on top of his head. Yet, it was not hot but almost comfortable in that garden. He felt the aroma of the flowers around him which seemed to give him his sense of reality back. “Such a beautiful day and a beautiful place to be in”, he thought.
“Do you or do you not, Victor?” , her voice was a bit louder now.
“Do I or do I not what?” , Victor quipped back and instantly realized how stupid his remark was. Determined not to let the damage go any further, he replied back before she could respond, “Yes, I do dear. I do love you.”
Somehow, Victor could see she was not happy on hearing this. He wondered if that was the right thing to say but then decided to act cool. She was again staring at him with that strong gaze making him wish he had his sunglasses on. There was a moment of awkward silence as both of them looked at each other, the hunter ready to shoot down the target and the prey not knowing what to do.
“Enough , I’ll take charge of the situation and bring it back under control”, Victor thought.(At that very moment, he heard someone inside himself smirking for the pretension of false bravado) . However, a determined man as Victor was, not to be ruffled by internal or external criticisms of his own abilities, he opened his mouth in an attempt to utter something but was quickly snapped off by her voice.
“Describe it in seven words then!” , she seemed to be saying.
“Describe what?”, he foolishly asked back.
“Your love …” , she seemed to be glaring at him in anger now.
Of all the difficult situations Victor had managed to successfully counter in his life, he always had a cue as to how he could bail himself out in those times. But here was a rarity of a mess he was in. He was no poet and certainly not a magician with words and yet he had been asked to describe his love in seven words. He had a grim realization that his whole future depended on the next seven words he would speak.
“Even Shakespeare wouldn’t be able to do it”, he thought.
Realizing that time was running out and he could do with the internal sarcasm later, he began to race his mind around the options he had. He could say “I love you” twice but that would be only six words. “What if I added a ‘and’ , it would be ‘I love you and I love you’ … seven words as demanded” , he thought. However, seven words as they were, they didn’t sound appealing enough to Victor for he had a slim sense of understanding romanticism somewhere deep inside. He decided to keep this option as a backup in the eventuality of finding nothing concrete.
“Shucks! Why seven, why not three or why even a limit to the words?” , the voice within him again cried out frustrated at the unfruitful attempts to resolve such a hopeless situation.
“Damn! I wouldn’t be able to figure this out”, he thought as a few more moments elapsed. He wracked his brains a bit more and just when he was about to give up, he got a faint recollection of a short beautiful verse of a poet expressing his terms of endearment to his lover.
“What was it … O Love! O thy … nopes … it started along the lines of ‘O Mighty love’ … no … it was somehow love being mighty and a teacher and all of this was tied up together … ah! if only I had some more time …”
“Victor!!! Seven words and you can’t even do that.” , her sharp voice sounded almost menacing.
“Seven , right , seven … ” , he repeated after her trying to buy himself more time.
She looked at him with a feeling of disappointment now. She slowly turned her back towards him and started walking away. And it was then he suddenly recalled the entire verse. And to his delight he realized the verse was seven words and so perfect for the situation. He almost felt happy now.
“Wait! I got it … I got It … seven right , seven … I got It, I got it!” , he cried after her moving figure, desperately raising an arm as a signal for her to stop.
“You got it , sure?” , her voice was cloyingly sweet now.
“Yes, I do … I have got it … in seven …” , he said rather stammering.
“Ok. Seven it is then …” , she said with a chuckle.
The crashing of the hammer on the auction table woke Victor up with a jolt. He found himself standing with his left arm raised in the direction of the auction table. The crowd in the hall seemed to be watching him agape with a sense of amusement.
“Congratulations Sir! The painting is yours in seven thousand dollars” , the man in the gold rimmed spectacles doing the auction said to him.
“The auction is closed now for the day. The buyers will be escorted to backstage for payment and taking their purchased items” , the auctioneer announced.
Victor slumped back into his chair with a thud. His first impulse was to look right and catch sight of that woman again , to ensure it was not a dream and everything was alright and he had not been strapped off by seven thousand dollars. He saw her vague figure moving away to the exit amongst the crowd. He wanted to run out too , to catch hold of her , to tell her those seven beautiful words he had so painfully thought out. Yet something told him that the moment had passed away. (And so our great Victor didn’t make an attempt to rush after her)
“Excuse me sir , would you please step this way for the payment” , the heavy voice of a guard snapped his train of thoughts.
Slowly, he stood up and begin to think about the situation he was in. The girl was gone, there was no one to listen to his poetic verse and he had to make a payment of seven thousand dollars which he didn’t have at the moment nor could afford to pay with the savings he had.
“Well , whats more worse , to express yourself in seven words when you are poor at words or to express out seven thousand dollars from thin air when you are poor at your bank balance” , Victor thought and couldn’t help resist a chuckle.
