How Good a Judge Are You?

Ram was at home one day when he heard activity outside and realised that new neighbours were moving in.

A family had arrived with a moving truck: a middle-aged couple and their two teenage children. They seemed cheerful, friendly and easy-going. Ram stepped outside, exchanged greetings with them and watched them carry boxes into the house.

A little later, the new neighbour came over and introduced himself as Gaurav. He said that the family had just moved from another city, and that once they had settled in properly, he would come over again so that the two of them could sit together and chat over a cup of tea.

The first impression could hardly have been better. Ram went back inside thinking he had been fortunate to get such warm, decent and friendly neighbours.

The next day, Ram went to a nearby hair salon. As usually happens in such places, he and the hairstylist began chatting about local matters, and Ram mentioned that a new family had moved into the house next to his.

‘They seem like really nice people,’ he said. ‘Very friendly.’

The hairstylist asked who they were, and Ram gave him the name.

The hairstylist suddenly looked interested. ‘Do you mean the tall fellow with the beard and moustache? A little plump, not much hair on his head?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he said he came from another city?’

‘Yes.’

‘Two teenage children?’

‘Yes.’

The hairstylist lowered his voice. ‘Do you know who that man is? In the city he came from, he is known as a con man. He has cheated a lot of people.’

That was the whole of it. No evidence, no document, no police report, no second source. Just a short conversation in a hair salon.

Yet something had already happened. Gaurav had changed, not in reality, but in Ram’s mind.

When Ram got home later, he saw Gaurav outside near his car. Gaurav smiled and greeted him, and Ram barely responded. The friendliness of the previous day had given way to suspicion. The man he had thought pleasant and trustworthy now looked dangerous and dishonest.

A few days later, the truth emerged. The hairstylist had confused Gaurav with somebody else. Gaurav was not the person he had been talking about at all.

Now Ram felt terrible. He was ashamed of having treated an innocent man coldly and wondered how he could possibly explain his behaviour.

But the most important part of this story is not the hairstylist’s mistake. It is what happened inside the listener.

Nothing about Gaurav had changed. His face, his voice, his family and his conduct were exactly as they had been the day before. Only one new piece of information had entered Ram’s mind, and that single piece of information completely altered his judgement of the man.

This is how easily our minds work. We perceive something, we interpret it, and we form a conclusion. Our judgement depends first on what reaches us through the senses, but what often affects us most strongly is what we hear from another person. Someone tells us something about somebody, and from that moment we no longer see that person in the same way. The troubling part is that we rarely stop to ask whether the information is accurate, complete, relevant or even about the right person.

Emotion then enters the picture. Fear, anger, loyalty, resentment, sympathy, suspicion or excitement can cloud the intellect. Once emotion takes control, judgement becomes far less reliable, and decisions made in that state may later become a source of regret.

This is why I have started a new interactive Tavamithram series called What’s Your Verdict?

You will be given a situation and asked to judge it based on the information available to you at that moment. Then more information will appear. You may discover that something important was missing, or that your first judgement still stands, or that the new details change everything. Then you will be asked again: do you stand by your verdict, or would you change it?

The purpose is not to trick you. It is to let you observe something that normally happens too quickly for us to notice: the formation of judgement itself. How quickly do you reach a conclusion? What information do you trust? What assumptions do you make? How much does emotion influence your decision, and how willing are you to revise your view when new facts appear?

And perhaps the most important question of all: how often in real life have we judged a person without knowing the whole story?

The first case opens on 22 September 2026 at 02:00 GMT.

Read carefully. Decide honestly. Then wait for the rest of the story.