How did the Greatest Murder Mystery turn into the Mystery of the White Shoes.

So this is how the story goes….few weeks back we had a team outgoing at Break Out. For those of you who don’t know what ‘Break Out’ is , it is a surreal escape experience and surely worth a try.

My team was assigned to solve the ‘The greatest Murder mystery of Westwoods’, which is one of the toughest escape themes. 6 of us had our detective hats on to solve the toughest murder mystery. In scene 1, we were locked in a small dark room with a torch. While looking for evidence, we spotted a mannequin which was actually a dead body with a phone. Our first clue was to unlock the phone, which we were able to do easily.

We then looked around for the second clue and found a box . We had unlock the box which had a rotating lock, the nastiest lock of all locks and with the most confusing instructions. We tried various permutations and combinations but failed. 15 mins were over so we finally called the game master for help. With his hints, we were able to open to the box to find a string with a small magnet attached at its end. We were clueless what had to be done next but finally figured out that we had to use the magnet to pick up the door key which was in the next room . We could then escape scene 1 and go to scene 2, the final one. But it was super difficult to get the key , until the Broomstick came to our rescue. We tied the string onto the broom and yes! The lid was attracted and revealed a key underneath. After many tries, we got hold of that precious key and unlocked the door, moving on to the next room. By then, 30 minutes were over . We just had 15 mins left.

Scene 2 was again a dark room which was the police office. The office had a few tables, with drawers and lots of things in them. As we were running out of time, each of us decided to look at different parts of the room to get clues.

Being a working mother is both stressful and tiring.To feel a little relaxed, I had opened my pair of white shoes and kept it on one side.

All of us were frantically looking for clues. Suddenly, I see my team, all knelt down and completely absorbed in observing something on the floor. One of them said '6+9=15, what does that mean? is that a clue?'. All excited that we’ve spotted the next clue, I made my way to the spot, I guess what did I see ???!!!!

My white shoes !!!! They were being thoroughly dissected as an important piece of evidence.

GOTTA RAAN !!!

Running is the new fitness fad. With everyone around you taking up-to running, I’m tempted to start running myself. For those who know me well, know that losing weight has been a hopeless saga of my life, though I’ve succeeded twice and failed umpteen times, I refuse to give up.

As I go through my own journey of ‘soul searching’ - this iconic term was coined by my college buddy, who taught me never to give up anything, be it losing weight, drinking or enjoying life, I’ve realized that I love making strategies and then leave it to others for implementing it. Hopefully, this will help me go far in my professional life but it certainly has had disastrous results in my personal health space. I keep making different strategies to lose weight, even go a step ahead and buy stuff but when it comes to implementing it or actually doing it, my record time has been less than 1 week. K says that I could have planned a Europe tour by now, if I hadn’t spent on those futile machines/drinks/weight lose programs/books etc etc.

Last Sunday morning, all four of us are on the breakfast table either feeding ourselves or each other. Aarya was watching Chu-Chu TV and this is the only time that she is not moving while being fed half boiled egg. K and occasionally Aarya, are feeding Czar with Marie biscuits. Czar is sheepishly looking at me to feed him with some egg or anything that Aarya is eating. Just yesterday he ate Aarya’s bread and butter which he would never even licked. While I’m feeding myself Maggi Ayam and browsing through face book and I see some pics of friends running a marathon. So I said ‘Amio RAAN korte chai – I also want to Run'. We, Bongs, at times use heavily accented English, where RUN becomes RAAN, 'What is this' becomes ‘Hot ij this’, 'For you' becomes ‘Furrr you’ so on so forth.

To my query, K immediately responded and said ‘ Hain, amar recipe ta use koro. India te sobakar khub bhalo legeche, ekheno lagbe – Yes, use my recipe, everyone loved it in India and so will people here' .K, who loves to cook and dreams of opening a restaurant or bar someday, consciously or unconsciously thinks and talks food all the time. He thought I wanted to cook Raan - It is a barbequed and spiced led of a lamb and K has kinda aced this dish.

So here where I was looking at a healthy lifestyle with 'Raan-ing'/Running, K was thinking about food and Raan. K and I started laughing. Seeing us Aarya started giggling and Czar started wagging his tail. Our Sunday started off on a happy giggly and funny note.