IN THE WINTER OF LIFE

Hullo world, need to let you know stuff that's been happening in my life. Most of it has to do with my f-i-l. He's become a 4-year-old. I love him more than ever now!!! Every little bit of improvement in his health brings so much good cheer to us!! When there's a setback, we pray and keep our hopes up and become like worker ants...scurrying around to figure out what we can do to make him better. Today, we introduced him to food supplements...in the morning, we'd almost given up hopes and now this remarkable turnaround. It's about 4:30 in the evening (IST) and he suddenly sat up and did a 'wicked' display of 'yaaru mahimothavaru.' Apparently, this is a Kannada dialog from a mythological story where Arjuna and his son Abhimanyu are trying to outdo each other in archery...and the poem talks about who's the superior one, etc. My f-i-l took us down memory lane to when he was in the 8th standard and there was an Education Inspector who was the Chief Guest for a Recitation Competition. Apparently, my f-i-l gave his name by mistake and then got extremely nervous about the whole thing...read on....There was this other student named Ranganna who literally 'sang' the poem, with gestures and histrionics. And then when Raghavan (my f-i-l) was asked to recite the poem, he just said it like he was saying a multiplication table...in a monotonous, expressionless manner. And we all can now guess who got the first prize - Ranganna of course!!! In my f-i-l's own words: 'Baddi maga, no one told me that I had to say it with expressions...just because that fellow used gestures, he got the first prize!!!' So, yeah, that cheered us all to no end...will keep you posted.