Head, I Win and Tail, You Lose: The Story of Rahul

Rahul is my classmate from business school and is, in general, very passionate and very opinionated. If he thinks something is right, it has to be right. The problem is that, in some cases, Internet can give you evidence for the contrary in milli seconds. After a late dinner last night. Rahul decides to claim that Freddie Mercury's real name was Fardoon Balsara. I would not have been sure but I had searched about Freddie Mercury yesterday morning and I knew that his real name was Farrokh Balsara. But the true Raymond man that Rahul is, he decided to bet. And bet an amount of 10 dollars....and lost in couple of seconds. Hail Wikipedia. Rahul decided to try his luck at other sources but it was all over soon. The fun did not stop here, in fact it was just beginning to unfold.

I am up 10 dollars and Rahul tried hard to get out of this hole by asking questions like 1) Who was Pakistan's first President?( I remember it was not Jinnah but was not sure who it was) 2) What is Area 51( and I thought people who believe in conspiracy theories about landing on the moon believed that the landing was staged in this super secret place in Nevada. Rahul disagreed..he believed it is associated with UFO conspiracies)..So he kept asking questions and most of the times, I was not sure of the answer. So I never decided to bet for 10 dollars. Now Rahul faces a beautiful dilemma and I am proud to have sacrificed material gains( 10 dollars) for pure unadulterated pleasure at the expense of someone else( not a bad deal for 10 dollars!!). I won't take the 10 dollars from him and the " Proud Bengali Hotmale " that he is, he has to either make me accept the money or beat me at a bet worth at least 10 dollars. And I will never agree to a bet unless I am 100% sure that I will win. For questions like above, I would just say that I am not interested in the bet. So from here on, Rahul either needs to give up his pride, which I can package as an object of ridicule in social gatherings, or he can keep asking me questions hoping I will agree to a bet. So bottom line is: he will never get me to bet on something in which I have the slightest chance of losing.

How wonderful life would be if all possible scenarios for your actions favored you!!!( and by the way, both me and Rahul were right about Area 51 but as you can see, I would never have given him a chance to redeem himself for something I was not absolutely sure of!!)