Friday, July 4, 2014

Popular Story with a twist-1: Race between Rabbit and Tortoise

The rabbit and tortoise took positions. The race commenced at the sound of the gun and both of them were off the block. Rabbit took up its natural speed from the word ‘go’ while tortoise was inching towards the finish line. This was the race of life - a marathon where the distance was longer than what the rabbit could finish on one sprint.

Midway through the race, the rabbit wanted to take a close look at where he was in comparison to where he thought he would be and not where tortoise could reach up to. This was needed for him to re-strategise the race, if needed, of course.

Rabbit was also out of breadth, perspiring and wanted to take a step back to move forward  taking a cue from Vidya’s blog version (negative) 1.0 which he read just a day ago J. Intelligent, Huh! And people thought rabbit was only a snob and not-so-steady.

Planning to take some rest, he did some calculation on approximate time it would take for the tortoise to catch up the distance and set the alarm clock accordingly. He did not forget to keep a buffer of 10 minutes from his overall time estimate just to give himself a fair chance.

Alarm bell went off and he woke up. Seeing his competition still at some distance, he started again and finished the race on time.


I still cannot figure out why the poor tortoise agreed to race with the rabbit. It could be probably due to pressure of expectation from his family and friends. He was to excel in all the fields as dreamt by his parents. His dreams did not matter. 

Knowing fully well his capabilities and shortcomings by then, he concluded enough was enough and decided that racing was not his cup of tea and hence made the most important decision of his life -to look for his core competency area.

Moral of the story: Fast and steady wins the race. Focus on what you are good at. Analyze where you are against your own self and not with your competition.
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Popular Story with a twist-2: Tortoise and the Swans

The swans took to the skies in search of better life along with the tortoise that could not fly. Swans wanted to help the tortoise transport to a new lake to get saved from severe drought in that area. The instruction to tortoise was to hold onto the stick and not to open his mouth lest he fell from a height.

Eventually, after quite a few miles in the flight, tortoise could not stay put up with the condition and opened its mouth to blabber something- the talkative that it was.

Falling from a height, he was trying to figure out ways to save himself and praying hard. Meanwhile he was looking frantically all around for something to hold on to while keeping his cool.

God helps those who help themselves and in this case, God did. The tortoise fell on a big heap of straws in a village and survived with some minor injury. With its presence of mind, it acted smart and created a story to the villagers. He made them believe that was God sent and the villagers should take good care of him for their well being.

He lived through, somewhat happily, for the rest of his life with the villagers' fate moving up and down affected by other factors in life – natural, political, economic.

The tortoise proved once again that one should be ready to face the challenges and should be smart and resourceful enough to convert the situation in his favor.
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P.S: The above writings are not intended to hurt any feelings or sentiments with popular stories. 

23 comments:

  1. I enjoyed your fun fables and the good messages at the end of each story. Nicely done.

    http://cattitudeandgratitude.blogspot.com/2014/07/ubc-day-4-you-have-sight-but-do-you.html

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  2. Great twists to the age old fables and great lessons too. Thanks for sharing, Jayanta :)

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  3. Some very valuable lessons learnt here...I agree persistence with intelligence wins!

    Nice stories :)

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  4. Interesting twists to your tales. In reality there are no winners or losers, there are only travellers. I'm like the tortoise, I like to travel through life slowly, savouring every moment.

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  5. Jayanta, you gave some interesting twists to these stories! Very well done. So apt for the times and contexts of today :) But it also goes to show the great teachable moments that can be created by an imaginative story-teller!

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  6. that was a fun read with some great lessons!!

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  7. A nice twist to age old fables. In the present days the the old saying 'slow and steady wins the race' has not much meaning.

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  8. Nice work, Jayanta! I've always wondered about that rabbit and tortoise story. But I think they tried to show the rabbit as overconfident and underestimated the tortoise. The story is supposed to be a lesson in persistence. :D

    I liked your take on both those stories! Hmm. I ought to ask that rabbit why he did not comment on my post after reading it. Sigh. Do you have his address? Does he blog? I'd like to thank him anyway for reading my post!

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    1. Yep, his laptop battery drained by the time he finished reading the last line of your blog. He phoned his friend, Jayanta to make sure there is a comment :D. Hope you are not angry with him anymore.

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  9. We have been reading only the old version of the story

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  10. Nice takes on both stories!
    I particularly liked your take on the Rabbit-Tortoise story, especially the tortoise's introspection and decision 'to look for his core competency area'.

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  11. I found the first story very very practical. The lesson it taught is even better than what the actual version had taught.

    About the second version I would say that I like the original version more.

    You are very creative. I enjoyed reading them both.

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  12. Cool lessons, Jayanta!
    The original stories also have parallel lessons!
    But, true that it is 'survival of the fittest!' :)

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