Intelligence Quotient

It all started with a momentary lapse in my knowledge of geography of USA. On one of our vacation trip to Hawaii ,I was doing the preparatory work .I was flummoxed . I could not get driving direction to Hawaii on map quest. It kept saying , ''Cannot find directions''.Well, I never claimed any proficiency in Geography .She caught me red handed in my moment of weakness . ''How can you get driving directions to Maui ,it is an Island '',she said.From then on began series of Agni Parikshas to prove my mettle


Everyday there was a new challenge, some were innocuous , some difficult and others mind boggling.Like the other day ,she asked me ''Do you know the meaning of my name? 'Hmm,what ? No, I don't know that '',I answered trying best to wriggle out of the question answer session. ''You don't even know know the meaning of your wife's name ''she said with the expression of shock and horror as if she had just heard her husband was Green Goblin ,the sworn enemy of Spider-man.Names having meaning is an part of Indian culture.Do the names ,Ann, Sue , Julia , any of these names have a meaning ?Coming back to my on the spot moment,I offered her my sincere apologies and told her to tell me the meaning of her name .To which she answered'' Do some research, find it yourself ''.

Then a month or two later, one evening as I was relaxing by reading my all time favorite ''The Mahabharata ''.She came to me and said''Come lets do a medium level Sudoku Quiz and see who finishes up first ''. I thought to myself ''Heavens Forbid if I lose to her,I am never seeing end to these quizzes. I have to win. I had never played Sudoku before but she had a couple of times. So one of these days ,she had taken time out from her extremely busy schedule to explain to a lesser mortal what it was all about .For those of you who are not aware of what it is . It is a fill in the blank with numbers where digits one to ten should come only once in all the line. The theme music of the movie '' Chariots of fire'' starting playing in my head as I took my seat next to her for the battle. I felt an overwhelming sense of burden of saving the grace of all husband-kind of the world. I summoned all my brain cells to start working at the fastest possible speed and beckoned all the Gods to be on my side. With a Jai Mata Di , I started filling the digits in the blank spaces.. About fifteen minutes later , I glanced at her sheet and she just was about half way done.It was a do or die situation, failure was not an option. I concentrated hard on the quiz , and made a small offer to God of $ 5 prashad. There was pin-drop silence for another twenty minutes. Just then there was a shriek piercing the tic tic of the clock,the only sound present in the house. It was the sound of triumph , my triumph.She grabbed my sheet in disbelief and checked all the numbers twice.I had beaten her fair and square.

I will be going to temple tomorrow to offer my thanks to the Almighty.