The question of Dr. Abinash Barua

The question of Dr. Abinash Barua

By Upal Baruah

Dr. Abinash Barua got up with an uneasy feeling this morning. A nagging thought had kept him awake most of the night. By the time, he stopped tossing and turning in bed and fell into a disturbed sleep, the sunlight had already sneaked through the crack of the bedroom window. No wonder, his usual morning energy was replaced by an irritating sense of lethargy. He kept lying down in bed for some time to deliberate on the pressing issue that had bothered him.

Dr. Barua is the principal cum owner of a private engineering college, having a lush green campus at a little distance away from the historic town of Tezpur.

Dr. Barua had been a reputed space scientist in ISRO and he was responsible for finding a number of innovative solutions in the country’s space programme. He took voluntary retirement in order to devote full time in pursuing his passion of teaching and he decided to set up a new look engineering college at his home town.

The college recently received a project from ISRO that required them to find a solution to a problem they had been facing.

Dr. Barua decided to advertise for a faculty to do this project with the idea that the infusion of new minds would galvanise the college faculty and staff into thinking in new ways. The selection committee had zeroed in on a few candidates who besides having excellent credentials were likely to meet the set criterion on critical thinking.

What triggered his restlessness last night at bed was that the first short-listed candidate, let’s call him Mr. X here, was coming for the final interview with him the next morning and he had not yet decided upon a method to test the candidate’s critical thinking ability.

Next morning, Mr. Baruah found the question. He asked Mr. X


If a ship on sail has 26 sheep and 19 goats, calculate how old is the ship’s captain?

Open Ended

So, what should Mr. X do and why?