An Ode to Shakuntala Devi, or Puzzles to Frustrate You

A set of five gogyoshi

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Gargi Mehra

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If your friend is twice as old as you
were when he was three years younger
than you, how many candles would you blow
before you unravelled the mysteries
of the woman who humbled calculators

When guavas at the market cost
double their worth, and the hawker
tosses in two more for free, how many
green globules can the woman eat before
spitting out the seeds of math rookies?

If half of a swarm of locusts flew to the forest
And a third of them drifted to dust-laden deserts,
And twice the difference hung back,
What was the total number of pests
that the woman swatted away in her youth?

Plunge your hand deep into a box filled
with marbles, four of three colours each,
Close your eyes, curl your fingers around any one
Tell me how many you must choose
To preserve the brain of the Mental Calculator

A number whose double is greater
than its half, by forty-five or anything else,
may be divined in dreams, but the
seventh root of a billion-behemoth
demands the brain of a Human Computer

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Gargi Mehra is a writer, a computer engineer, and a mother. She plays the piano, smashes her lessons on Duolingo and thrives on word games including crosswords, Scrabble and of course, Wordle. She lives with her husband and two children in Pune, India.

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