When the Building Came Alive

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Kasturi Dhama Apartments — the play area where many evenings came alive. The lights would go out without warning. For a brief second, the entire building would fall silent. Then, from somewhere in Kasturi Dhama Apartments, a chorus would erupt. “Yayyy!” It is difficult to imagine children celebrating a power failure today. But in the Bangalore of the nineties and early 2000s, a power cut did not always feel like an inconvenience. Especially in the late evenings, it felt like permission. Permission to stop whatever we were doing, leave the darkness inside our homes, and step into the building outside. Before Kasturi Dhama became home, we had moved through a few different parts of Bangalore. My family had begun in Srirampuram and Vyalikaval before gradually cementing ourselves in Malleswaram for the next few decades. My earliest memory is of living in a vatara —a Kannada word loosely used for a building or a cluster of homes—on 15th Cross, near Karur Vy...
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Teaser!

On a lazy afternoon, as I was getting ready to do something in my research, I got this forward from Deepak Challa. Post your answers in the comments.

The question reads thus:

You are on a game show.

The host tells you, ‘I want you to open one of these three doors. Behind two of the doors is a bale of hay. Behind one of the doors is a million dollars. Choose a door’.

You choose door number one.

The host, who knows what is behind each door, says, ‘Before I open door number one for you, let me show you what is behind door number two’.

He opens door number two, revealing a bale of hay and then says, "Now I can open door number one for you, or if you want, you can switch doors and choose door number three, what do you want to do?"

What should you do, and why? Or does it even matter what you do?


Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 4, 2006 at 10:10 PM

    It was an unwarranted action by the host to unveil the contents of one door. If you are an optimist, you would go ahead with opening the door of your original choice ,a pessimist, you would open the other door. For me it matters what you do, because people will always keep springing surprises on you, but you have got to keep going, believe in yourself, and believe that you are destined to succeed. There is always a door open for the eternal optimist.

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  2. AnonymousApril 6, 2006 at 11:51 AM

    Probability increased from 33% to 50%. Its like tossing a coin in air.
    You live with your call. I stick with the first one. If I get hay in that,
    I would probably sell it to a farmer and get make a burger out of it :-)
    Dude, Smitha and her hubby Suhas visited this weekend from Wwashington.
    Had loads of fun together.

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