These three unrelated things came to a head in my life in November 2023.

And last week when Wow Dinga and Little Po came home with a new Rubik’s cube gifted by their aunt who had just returned from Hungary, it all came back to me.

Rubik’s cube as we all know is a 3 dimensional puzzle invented by the Hungarian architect and sculptor Erno Rubik to demonstrate to his pupils, the structural problem with pivoting moving parts without having the structure falling apart.

It was later marketed as a toy and since then has been popular with children and adults alike, attaining almost cult like status..

Anna Shetty had planned a holiday to Egypt over the Diwali break and a cruise on the Nile was one of the highlights of that trip It was going to be a longer holiday than their usual four day break and since it would involve lots of historical sights ( read b o r i n g for the kids) and waiting at airports ( read t i r e s o m e ) etc, she brought along a Rubik’s Cube to keep the boys entertained and away from each other’s throats.

Gaza

Our holiday was booked well in advance and we were all ready to fly out on the night of 10th November. But a month earlier on 7th October, Hammas and several other Palestinian organisations launched simultaneous attacks on Israel from Gaza.

That was enough to throw our arrangements out of whack. Not only were we anxious about going ahead with our trip but but worried that something might happen if we went ahead.

Many people cancelled their holidays to Egypt, and our travel agent had to jiggle around with our hotels etc and our cruise ship. She squished us in a cruise that had a group of Koreans and a group of East Europeans since we definitely didn’t want to eat Butter Chicken and Curry rice with other exclusive ‘Indian’ cruises.

The Cruise

So we found ourselves boarding the ship that we boarded.

After we settled into our cabins, we went down for lunch and were assigned a table near the Europeans. with distinctly Slavic features. They were a bunch of old ladies and two men – one young and one old. Playing detective, I surmised that they were a group of friends travelling with their tour coordinator ( the older man who was the only one who spoke English). The younger man, with floppy hair and small eyes, who I thought was travelling with his mum (a lady who resembled him).

While everyone on the tables were chattering, I felt the young man’s eyes boring into our table. I realised he was staring at Anna Shetty. We were quite used to people staring at her so we didn’t pay much attention. But when winked at her, I was a bit horrified. Surely this man knew she was travelling with her family and was decidedly not single.

On the day the boat was passing through the locks at Luxor, the entire ship gathered on deck watching the procedure and enjoying the sun.

The Europeans were up too and having a merry time laughing and joking. And the Starer kept staring out at the sea.

Suddenly, one of the ladies came up to Little Po, smiled a wide smile and pointed at him. She then made a gesture of twisting the cube and pointed to herself. We guessed that she wanted to try, so we offered it to her. She refused, shaking her head and ran back to her table. A few minutes later, she came with the Starer in tow.

We were totally shocked when he pointed to the cube and spoke to us in English! He explained that his group was from Hungary, the land of Erno Rubik and that his mother was intrigued with the speed with which the boys solved the puzzle.

But what shocked us more was his revelation that he was a nuclear physicist working in the Netherlands!

So much for my wild imagination! That wink and stare must have just been his way of trying to reach out to people younger than his old mum and her friends.

Ciao