In Defence of Ten

-

 

Ever since I heard the story of crabs in a bucket — that no crab can escape because the others pull it back — I’ve been intrigued by how much we humans resemble them. Why do we do the same? Why pull others down when they try to climb up?

For years, I couldn’t find a satisfying answer. Not until today. Now I know that both crabs and humans are tied by the same number — the less of magic and more of tragic number — Ten. Crabs have ten claws, and humans have ten fingers, both occasionally used for bringing others down.

If you’re sympathetic to today’s school kids and agree they have justifiable reasons to hold a grudge against Ten, think about the early Romans! Their punishment for mutiny or cowardice was called decimation — where one in every ten soldiers was executed. Talk about giving a number a bad reputation.

Yet, paradoxically, Ten also represents perfection — the first double-digit number, a flawless score. The complete set of fingers that help us build, create, and type out complaints about the unfairness of life.

Maybe that’s the real irony — Ten gives us everything we need to lift each other up… and everything we use to pull each other down.

And fittingly, here we are in the tenth month of the year, with this little musing on Ten written in response to a prompt by Poets and Storytellers United.

Read Reflect Rejoice

Comments

  1. Rosemary Nissen-WadeOctober 28, 2025 at 1:45 AM

    Love your musing! Thanks for participating at P&SU! Hope you come again; look for a new prompt every Friday.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Its True

-
Image
I was prepared for a call at two in the morning. This was to let me know that they have landed in the Doha airport. I had planned it well and slept early. I would have little time to sleep after picking them up in the middle of the night. But my wife woke me up at 11:30 with a call from an unknown number. This was to let me know that she had lost her phone at the Dubai airport and I was not to expect any call when the plane landed in Doha.  My immediate grief was that I will no longer have the luxury of sleeping till they landed, but have to go early and wait in the arrival lounge.  The loss of the Samsung galaxy made us sad. The realization of losing those pictures of our last vacation made us sadder.  Early in the morning I went to Vodafone store and blocked the number temporarily, stopping any misuse of the phone number. We had heard and read a lot of stories of people getting back stuff from various parts of Dubai during our stay there. These were firstha...
Read more

L. I. P. - Let’s Celebrate the Living

-
Image
Photo credit: pixabay@pexels Have you ever come across the acronym LIP ? If not, keep reading—I’d love to introduce you to this beautiful concept. As I take a bird’s-eye view of the world, a strange pattern emerges—one that leaves me wondering: When are we humans, as a species and a society, going to grow up? You often see an outpouring of grief when someone passes away—social media flooded with RIP messages, heartfelt tributes, and stories of how they touched lives. These messages may comfort grieving relatives and those left behind, but the person they are meant for is no longer here to read them. Ever wonder where all this warmth was when they were alive? As we moved from close-knit families to isolated satellite units, our community bonds weakened. Once, we knew our neighbours, shared joys and struggles, and looked out for one another. Today, we barely know who lives next door, let alone what they believe or battle in silence. Human connection, once instinctive, now feels like an...
Read more

Maa Tripureswari

-
Image
A couple of weeks back I took a break of 10 days and went to Kolkata. It was a great feeling to be back and spend some time with the family after a solitary stint here. We took a step to further enhance the experience and made a dash to Agartala, the place where we spend our childhood days. It was an indescribable feeling to be back in the places which meant so much to life there after more than 15 years. Those were the places like my school, the streets, the play grounds, and above everything our home where I lived for so many years. I will not go into describing that aspect in this post. I wish to introduce two temples from my childhood land. The first one is the Tripureswari Temple the temple of the Mother Goddess of Tripura who protects all her children. The other is the  Bhubaneswari  temple immortalized by the great Rabindranath Tagore in his novel 'Rajarshi'. Agartala is the state capital of Tripura an erstwhile princely state now an undisputed and integral part of Indi...
Read more