MIND GAMES
Bull Run in Olympics
Aditya Rishi

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of medals. Jack fell down, got back to town, now Jill was back in saddle. She rode fast, but still came last, and all was square in battle.

Stocks were down and bulls were out, but Jack thought nothing of the bout. The real battle, he told Jill, will be on that killer hill. O’ Jack, dear, what I fear, is not the hill, but the bear.

Do not fear, o’ fair Jill, where there’s a way, there’s a will. We have been training for the show; Mount Olympus is where we go. We’ll go there and give a fight, that’ll take care of the fright.

Hundreds of sermons, I can count, and every time it’s on the mount. Not the knights, not the lords, this is the mount of Greek Gods. When you are young and ready for test, you come here to be world’s best.

To Athens, to Athens, to Athens onward ho; there we’ll catch a bull, and put it on the pull, and then we’ll let it go. The bear will take it on, and then all hopes are gone. But when the wind is new, Bull Run will continue.

The match is always close; up and down it goes. But those who sustain always stand to gain. The gains are party time, losses are bloodbath; the saner are those who tread the middle path.

If bull’s a great fighter, bear’s a gladiator, and things would be more even if we had an escalator. The escalator comes, riding on their chums. Talking of luck, hopes and despair, all will depend, who’s quicker through the air.

The race should be held in a fair way, on this escalator, a moving stairway. Let it not be bloody, is all we can pray, but after the gun is off, what can we say.

It’s close at the start, but Jack is running three times as fast, and by the time they are off this escalator, Jack has stepped on 75 stairs, while Jill has stepped on 50, and is far from the gladiator. They wonder in amazement, they wonder in the lab, how many stairs does the escalator have? How is it, how is it, they ask the translator, how’s its speed related to the speed of the competitors? Were they running with or against the escalator? Jill the bull and Jack the bear, in the end, end up very near. Jack falls down and breaks his crown, and Jill comes tumbling after.

(All medal hopefuls, bears or bulls, should write at Mind Games, The Tribune, or aditya@tribunemail.com. Not quite the uphill task it looks.)