First Place Winner in Earlybird's Author's Spotlight for July-August round (Season 3) |
Prompt: Round The Clock Task - My Spotlight Experience Tell me what and how do you feel in this solid six days challenge. Use all the words below in your piece: era, once, today, during, century, end, week, cycle, period, tonight Cooked in a Crucible Odd-looking title, what? I agree. They teach us authors-to-be that titles and short descriptions should act like a hook and draw the reader in. Well, to be honest then, that is one of the reasons I used the above as my title. In the period between Monday the 28th of July and today, I have lived a hundred times and died a thousand times. In the era of the dinosaurs, which was in the late Jurassic age, writing was virtually unknown, and it remained so till about 10000 years ago, give or take a week, that our forefathers began to draw pictures of the prey they had hunted for food. This happened, I think, somewhere in Europe. They must have made a strong impression on their descendants (pun intended), for they developed, first, hieroglyphics, and then, very soon, letters of some or the other alphabet ...an offshoot of which went on to form the Germanic script, and from that arose the English language! earlybird must have been a taskmaster during the age of the Pharoahs. I can visualise him in rich gold finery, a long cap on his head, an armband around his large and muscular arm, a waist-band shaped like a cobra around his waist and leather thongs that were strapped all the way around his legs right up to his ... er ... upper legs. With a whip in his hand, he must have enabled the quick erection of the pyramids at Giza, the whip first landing on the guys, then the girls, and finally the Woolly Mammoths ... keeping everyone in line, making them sweat till they almost collapsed, and "dropping" those who failed to do even one task within the time-frame decided by him. Is it too difficult to imagine why thousands of labourers died while creating the magnificent structures? In the century of Emperor Rameses the II, our taskmaster, in his earlier birth (was he called EarlyCat in those times, or EarlySet, I wonder), was finally given his comeuppance when his labourers sang paeans for him and glorified him before the Emperor. Not just that, they even devised Creeds for his entire task, and these creeds can be viewed even today when the Government of Egypt shines the spotlight on the tablets put up a few miles away from the Pyramids. On these tablets, one can see beautiful hieroglyphic inscriptions of praises for the earlier avatar of our kind taskmaster. Once this task is out of the way, which will be today, I am going to cycle all the way to Giza and read those tablets and pay my tributes to our beloved taskmaster's venerable ancestor. I will surely remember to read the exact name of that gentleman and let all my readers here know who that man was. In the final analysis, tonight, I know I am going to be sent for a big toss as I have spoken tongue-in-cheek about a person who would have, otherwise, considered me a valid candidate for a prize, or at least, a honourable mention, but will, now, definitely DROP me as well from any such list. Beloved co-competitors and other worthy readers, I, therefore, urge you to close your eyes after reading this sentence through, and say a prayer to the Lord to save me from the ignominy of being DROPPED. And that, my friends, is the end of my tale. ******************************* Judge Earl's comment: Very well said and I could relate your statement. "In the period between Monday the 28th of July and today, I have lived a hundred times and died a thousand times." The title? It's really odd but true. A taskmaster? Thank you for that "noun" or "personage" and the prompt words are well addressed and appropriate. Earl - ## Dr.Taher ## |