By: Ramprasath

“Let’s say I start a Math Antakshari. That is, one problem leads to another problem, and so on. How quickly can each of you provide the answers?” Math professor Nana asked.

“In one minute,” Deena replied instantly.

Yuvan chuckled.

“I can answer in half a minute,” he said, intending to get back at Deena.

“That quick?” Nana’s eyes opened wide.

“Alright, Yuvan. What if I take half a minute?”

“Then a quarter of a minute is enough for me,”

“Wow! We got mathematicians in our class, then” Nana clapped.

“Looks like we are already in an Antakshari game,” he announced.

Deena and Yuvan both looked puzzled. All other students pounded their fists on the desk in applause.

“If Yuva could do it in a quarter of a minute, how fast could you be, Deena?” Nana tossed the challenge to Deena.

“Half of that quarter,” Deena bounced back.

“Half of that half,” Yuvan retorted stubbornly.

“It’s two o’clock now. We can run this competition until tomorrow. Start now, calculate and show me who’s going to take how much time at each iteration,” Nana said eagerly.

“0.25 of a minute,” Deena went to the blackboard, took a chalk, and wrote on the board.

Yuvan rushed to the blackboard, took another piece of chalk, and wrote “0.125 of a minute.”

“0.0625,” Deena wrote, cutting out the obvious.

Immediately, Yuvan did a mental calculation and wrote “0.03125”.

“Good. This is Antakshari. Take all day today. No calculators allowed. Please show me your calculations tomorrow. Let’s see who wins,” Nana said, leaving the classroom.

Deena and Yuvan looked at each other. The entire classroom was split in half. One half stood by Deena, while the other half went with Yuvan.

Deena and his friends sat in the classroom and began filling in the remaining sequence. Deena called Thyagu for help, and Thyagu brought Vimal to help him. Deena calculated the subsequent numbers in the Antakshari sequence. Thyagu, in turn, calculated them separately to verify, and Vimal calculated them a third time to confirm what Thyagu had verified.

Yuvan stood, shocked and in disbelief, at the sudden gathering of students helping Deena.

Deena and Thyagu laughed mockingly at Yuvan.

“Laugh all you want… tomorrow you will kneel before me,” Yuvan said, moving out of Deena’s sight. His friends also walked past, looking condescendingly at Deena’s friends.

~ * ~

The next day in the classroom,

“Alright? Yuvan, Deena, show us all what you got,” Nana ordered.

Yuvan went to the blackboard, smirked, and wrote “0.015625.” In response, Deena wrote, “0.0078125.” Both continued to write in turns.

0.00390625

0.001953125

9.765625\text{E-}4

4.8828125\text{E-}4

2.44140625\text{E-}4

1.220703125\text{E-}4

6.103515625\text{E-}5

3.0517578125\text{E-}5

1.52587890625\text{E-}5

7.62939453125\text{E-}6

3.814697265625\text{E-}6

1.9073486328125\text{E-}6

9.5367431640625\text{E-}7

4.76837158203125\text{E-}7

When it was Yuvan’s turn, he stood silently without writing anything.

“What’s the matter, son? Why have you stopped? Write the next number,” Nana encouraged.

“I didn’t calculate beyond this, Nana. This is the last number I calculated before leaving the classroom yesterday,” Yuvan said.

“Why? Why didn’t you calculate? It’s a simple calculation, isn’t it?”

Yuvan remained silent without replying. Deena jumped in joy. Following Deena, the entire classroom cheered and tapped their desks. Deena’s friends hugged each other. Some looked at Yuvan’s friends and mocked them, saying, “Poor guys.”

“Then, should I declare Deena the winner?” Nana asked in a loud voice.

“How can you?” Yuvan was the first to object.

“How!” Deena mocked Yuvan.

“Brother, this is Antakshari. You missed your turn.”

He then turned to Nana. “My friends and I sat at my house all day yesterday, and we calculated Yuvan’s numbers too, Sir.” He added further.

Nana now turned to Yuvan.

“You are the top student in the class. I expected a lot from you. How could you lose like this? Deena did your work too. He deserves to be the winner,” he said in disappointment.

“Alright. Please go ahead,” Yuvan said, looking away.

Deena’s friends shouted, “Hurray!”

They tore pages from their practice books and threw them toward Yuvan’s friends. Yuvan’s friends remained silent, showing no reaction. Their silence made Deena’s friends even more enthusiastic. They started shouting in chorus, and Nana had to intervene, shouting, “Quiet!”

Once the classroom came to complete silence,

“Tell me. I want to know the reason from you,” Nana insisted.

Deena looked up at Nana, confused. He wondered why Nana was forcing Yuvan to answer instead of just announcing the competition winner directly.

“I didn’t come to this school to compete with Deena or his friends. I came here to develop the skills necessary to survive in the wild. Competing with Deena isn’t why I joined this school.” Yuvan said composedly.

“He lost; I won. He is just covering up his inability,” Deena said, fuming.

“You need to explain that more for us, Yuva.” Nana pressed Yuvan.

“This competition is meaningless. None of these calculations will ever reach even the second minute, starting with the first. I mean, what’s the point in being stuck between one and two?” Yuvan shrugged his shoulders.

Deena’s face frowned in shock. He turned to the blackboard, looked at the numbers, thought about them for a split second, and sighed, hitting his head with his hand.

By now, his friends had also understood what was happening and had become quiet. This time, none of Yuvan’s friends mocked Deena’s friends; they maintained silence and handled the situation with dignity.

“I have conducted many math competitions so far. In all of them, students enter competitions to win. This is the first time someone has won the competition by simply walking away from it,” Nana concluded.