Finest Post Winners - September 2017

Sigh!!! I love floating around with my head in the clouds. Nothing more comforting than that. I was always ‘like this wonly’, until of course my mom and school teachers made it the business of their lives to beat out such undesirable proclivities from me at a young age. Finally, middle age and retirement within a few years of entering the work force (a self-imposed choice – the working, I mean) provided me the luxury of returning to my wooly-headed bliss ….. until I was gently brought back to action by the timely reminder from RGS about the importance of time.

Talking of parents and teachers, sad that - our education system and the way we try to break the individuality of kids by making them conform to certain norms. Not that there is nothing to be said for that old fashioned way of bringing up kids, especially when we see the way a lot of kids these days are going, leading Bhargavi03 to express her angst with the question whether parenting is a boon or a curse. It is a no-win situation. Parents down the generations have asked this question ‘what do we do with them, what do we do without them’? Every generation of parents has despaired over their kids – apparently they do what they shouldn’t and they don’t what they should. “Where did we go wrong”? There is no right or wrong, is there? Solutions are as individual as the children themselves. It’s a matter of finding solutions to suit one’s kid.

Parenting has always involved sacrifices, but is that such a tragedy after all? Sacrifices are choices made by us to give up some option in favour of others, even if that which we are sacrificing seems very precious. In fact that is what a sacrifice is, isn’t it – “give up (something valued) for the sake of other considerations”. (Uncool Google seems to agree with me!!! Not so uncool of him, after all! J) Jayasala42 has given various examples of sacrifices in her snippet on ‘One sacrifices, others enjoy’. Unfortunately, the word ‘sacrifice’ has attained negative connotations over time e.g the dentist telling me very seriously when I was a kid ‘we’ll have to sacrifice 4 teeth of yours in order to align the rest’. “Sacrifice”? Who was sacrificing? When did I (or more precisely my teeth) become sacrificial goats? Did the dentist treasure my teeth so much as to ‘sacrifice’ them? It reminds me of RK Narayan’s write up in a newspaper many decades ago about how his mother decided to ‘sacrifice’ his hair at Tirupathi for some reason or the other. Of course, RKN was never consulted about the intended sacrifice!!! One would imagine his mother valued his hair more than he did ….. it is a different matter that RKN would willingly sacrifice the other option that his mother valued rather than his hair!!!

Sacrifice for children or ‘sacrifice’ of educational or job opportunities in favour of marriage. What would be your choice? Does everything have to be sacrificed at the altar of marriage? Life, job, education, fun, individuality ….. SGBV does not think so. This is one of those situations where one can afford to have the cake and eat small pieces of it too from time to time! It does not always have to be either/or. I agree with her totally on that one! Ask Thyagarajan. His wife seems to have mastered the art. All that is required is a particularly helpful rat which would set the stage for instant entertainment at home with hubby playing main role. J

Oh, I could go on and on. But considering the importance of time (mine and yours) I have to be content with a mention of just the above few snippets. The others are all worth a special mention except that I’d have to write a whole chapter to talk about each of the contributions. So I hope the contributors not mentioned here would forgive me this time and let me get on with announcing the winners for September.

Where is the music? Never mind. The suspense is here. Are all of you sitting at the edge of your seats chewing your nails? Spare your toe nails though!!!

The Finest Narration Prize goes to Thyagarajan for “Tight Schedule – Spouse, Rat and ‘craft”

And

The Finest Contribution Prize goes to Bhargavi03 for her “Parenting – A Boon or Curse”?

My heartiest congratulations to the winners and to the nominators for a great job done.

Thanks a lot dear nominators for giving me such a rich choice this time around. Of course, I have to sacrifice this opportunity of awarding many other threads a prize, but then that is what doing this job is all about, isn’t it? One can only choose two.

Continue the good job dears. Please continue bringing more and more nominations and make this forum a treat for everyone with a huge offering of threads to read. Diwali Bonanza time!

After all it is always good to read and/or write.

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