Ockham's Razor: A Deductive Riddle

Chapter 2

With a painful groan, still not entirely sober, Ian woke the next morning. He tried to sit up, but nearly threw up. He took a quick assessment of himself and realised he had an incredible headache and even worse dry mouth. The sound of his heart was beating hard in his ears, creating a nausea that he finally could not escape. Trying to piece together the night before was too difficult a task this early in the morning. All he knew was that his hundred dollars went down range at the bar within the first two hours of getting there. He and Dave had their fill of drinks, got drunk, tried picking up a couple of women from the university, went home alone, deaf, broke and obviously the worse for his experience.

Anticipating being sick, he made his way to the bathroom to prepare for the inevitable. Ian started feeling the results of his race the day before. He looked at his elbows and knees and saw the bruising. After a tough look in the mirror, he examined the rest of his upright corpse. His left elbow and shoulder had borne the brunt of his roll after the collision with the car. The bruising was a lot worse than it appeared yesterday. It was now disfiguring and sore. Ian had earned worse, and experience told him that these would last for at least a week before his normal colour returned. He took small consolation in that long sleeves would cover all the damage, so he would not stand out too much.

He took a long look in the mirror. He saw a gaunt, pallid, face staring back at him. The face showed strain that went beyond the usual hangover. He contemplated shaving, figured that he could go one more day before looking too shaggy.

Ian took a second to look deep into the mirror and reflect on his status of victor. He was definitely someone who had more than his fair share of victories. He had endured some crushing defeats too, but on the whole, he was one who won more than he lost. His parents never approved of his gambling or daring activities. His father and mother had come from India two years before he was born. His father, a successful physician, wanted a son who would fully embrace the new country, becoming an Indian-American rather than being an Indian in America. So, Ian was given his name. When he asked as a child why he was called Ian, he was told, often with his father's teasing smile, that those were the last three letters in Indian. Ian believed it to be true until he was thirteen, at which time he was told by his Dad that the last three letters of the word technician, statistician and veterinarian were 'ian' as well.

Ian's mother was a hard-working woman who had been a nurse in India. While Ian's father could eventually practice in the US, it had proven to be far too difficult for his mother to meet all the bureaucratic gateways to nurse here. The bureaucracy would allow her to volunteer in the hospitals, which she did, but she could not get a wage or salary for it. She did not like America for that. However, that did not stop her from being a leader in the Indo-American societies in Seattle, where they lived. She was the traditionalist. She wanted to name Ian something more akin to what he would have been named in India, like Sanjay. However, Ian he became. Instead of dwelling on that, she did her best to infuse him with as many of the traditions of India and his cultural heritage. Ian dreaded some of the time he spent talking to his mother when younger, but now that he was living in Great Plains, and he was 24, not 13, he missed them.

Having a father push him into American society and a mother keeping him grounded in Indian society gave Ian an edge. On the one hand, he was able to move seamlessly in both circles. He could talk hockey with his American buddies and describe last night's hat trick on the ice with enthusiasm. On the other hand. he could still talk cricket with his Indian cousins and describe yesterday's hat trick on the pitch with eloquence and ease. The other thing his parents provided for him was an ability to think about anything from multiple perspectives. Politically, he was not an ideologue for any party because none of them represented what he thought. He could look at economics with a practiced eye and readily see the pros and cons of any proposal or program and balance them out. This proved very beneficial in university where he found writing papers for class to be a breeze. It took him almost no time at all to write a 2500-word essay espousing any position on any subject. His grades were adequate because he did not do the volume of research demanded by the professor, but his logic was always sound and his prose was concise and effective. This gave him more spare time than most during the school semesters.