256 Stumped!

Yuvati had wanted to test her mettle against Vindhya, her senior and also use this as a means to discover her own abilities. Her parents were really excited when she told them about her wanting to participate in the competition but for entirely different reasons. They believed that it would be good promotion for their business if their daughter managed to clear even one stage and had whole-heartedly supported her.

As expected, for her, the physical round had been a breeze to sail through. In fact, the written examination was the first serious hurdle that she was facing. Much to her delight, the multiple-choice questionnaire had been a surprise and a delightful one at that, where she needed to rely more on her common sense than the knowledge in her brain.

Suddenly for the first time she felt that maybe she would be able to clear this round and had started looking for partners for future rounds, like the many times chess champion, Ganga.

But now, staring at the question in front of her, she couldn't help but scratch her ear in confusion.

"In this world, who are the real travellers…"

Considering that her family moved all the time from one place to another as street performers, for a stupid moment, she wondered if the question was meant specifically for her.

"Oh god! I don't think that I am clearing this round," she muttered to herself nervously.

Vindhya who was sitting right next to Yuvati, opened the scroll in her hand with some trepidation. People across the hall were looking white-faced already and that made her hand shake a bit as she untied the thread around the rolled question paper.

Her gaze took in the single line written there and frown lines appeared between her eyes. What was this supposed to mean?

"The most dangerous liars…"

Was there another part to the line? She turned the page around to check the same but then came back to staring at the same half-baked line. She raised her head and saw a dazed expression on everyone's faces across the hall, much like her own.

"Well, thankfully I am not the only one feeling like an idiot," the thought flashed in her head.

Coming back to the question, she could think of many people who would fall in the category of liars, herself also included but obviously she wasn't going to admit it. And what did it mean by dangerous? Damn, even a whole week may not be enough to come up with an answer to this.

Right at the back of the examination hall, was Vaishali who held her head between her hands. She had read and re-read that one line more than twenty times already but was nowhere close to understanding it, forget answering it.

"What is heavier than Earth, higher than heavens, and faster than the wind?"

She looked up at the ceiling and silently screamed, "Is this a physics question? Can someone help me please?"

Some students left the hall after half hour. They had given up attempting to answer or wrote an answer just for the sake of filling the paper. But it was better than sitting there and getting frustrated.

After snoozing for a bit and then looking at the ceiling for some time, Mriga pinched herself and brought her mind back to the task.

"What is the purpose of this exercise? To check our suitability as the next QIT. So, if I have to think of someone who is stubborn, I need to remember that Guruji is not looking for names… right. Does that mean the question is referring to a personality? Or a habit? But stubbornness is a trait itself," she muttered to herself, drawing strange looks from people around her.

She was completely immersed in her boat of thought and couldn't be bothered if people assumed her to be loony at this moment.

What she didn't realise was that ever since her performance on the first day, the other contestants had started keeping an eye on her activities and that trend increased multi-fold post the first part of the physical stage where she made some unusual choices to clear that round. Which is why the girls in the auditorium were staring at her trying to figure out her way of solving the near impossible question in their hands.

"Wait! The question needs to be answered as per my interpretation of the same and not what others think of it, no?" saying so, a smile lit up her face and she bent down to scribble something on her answer sheet. Within two minutes, she got up and handed in her paper, walking out of the exam hall.

Vindhya's eyes followed her out of the hall with disdain. Had the chit figured out the answer already? Not possible!

On the other side, Vaishali who wasn't the most patient to begin with, had had enough of trying to come up with scientific answers to the questions asked. 'A question which doesn't have only one correct answer makes it an abstract one'. Hence, she decided to look at the queries in a philosophical way, instead.

Suddenly, she smiled to herself ruefully. With her background, she hadn't found a person in her growing up years who was dedicated enough towards her to guide her or hold philosophical discourse with her. As an orphan, she was supposed to be grateful for the food in her belly and clothes on her body. Any more expectation was simply a faraway dream. The thought of her late parents in this moment made her blink her eyes rapidly to chase away the errant tear which was trying to escape her.

Yuvati had already taken another sheet after writing and scratching out different answers in the previous one but somehow none of them felt right. She had discarded making a list of people after writing about nomads, performers etc. But then two realisations hit her.

One, the answer couldn't be this shallow and secondly, there was that word 'real' before travelers. So, they were trying to indicate something with that…

Vindhya's mind was completely focused on looking at the question from the QIT perspective. She didn't wonder about anything else but tried to understand the view point of the person evaluating her paper…