What have YOU won in all these years?

Now-a-days, there are a number of programs on TV where they ask you to either send SMSes or make phone calls for various reasons. The most common of these, of course, are talent shows where you think you are deciding the winner of the competition by sending lots of messages and your mobile service provider walks laughing all the way to the bank! The other kind is where they give out 'prizes' to the callers. One such program runs on a Kannada TV channel in the afternoon. It works like this: You basically send as many messages as you want/can on the previous day to 'register' for the program next day. The program is run live, where they call the people who have sent highest number of messages. They show a sari and ask us to guess it's price. If you guess it correctly, or if your guess is closer to the actual than others on that day, the sari is yours. Simple?

One of these days (18th March), my wife got the crazy idea of actually competing in this event. Off she went, sending a few messages, but she sent it in my daughter's name. The next day she was in front of the TV in the afternoon, to see how she fared. Unfortunately, the number of messages she had sent was nowhere close to the highest numbers that day. There was no way they were going to call her. However, as she sat there watching the program, it turned out that a number of people who the TV anchor called either did not pick up the call or were unreachable or busy and so on. As a result, the last person to be called for the day turned out to be my daughter! As the anchor announced the name of my daughter, there was a lot of cheering in my home from all. Celebrations had already begun. We didn't get the sari, but we got the consolation prize - cosmetics worth Rs. 1000. But my mom and wife didn't mind that. They were celebrating as if my daughter had got the first rank in CAT exams. My daughter, meanwhile, being all of 5 months old, was blissfully unaware of her achievement(!) and was thinking exactly what most babies of her age think, that is, "Should I cry now or later?" and "Huh?"

Now, winning the prize is one thing, actually going to the office of the TV channel and getting it from there is totally another. Considering that we were only going to get a box of cosmetics, most of which may be unusable, I was not even close to thinking of actually going and getting it. But my mom and wife had other ideas. "What have you won on TV in all these years? Nothing. She is just 5 months old and she has already won something in her very first attempt. At least for that reason you must go and get the prize". It was only then that the importance of my daughter's achievement and the gravity of the situation started sinking in to me. I quickly realized that I had no choice.

The office of the TV channel was right in the middle of the city, with no parking available anywhere in 2 Km radius of it. Finding the office was an appropriate job for Indiana Jones. Further, I had to make two trips to their office because of their restrictive timings. Finally, there was a little shocker. They wanted the person who had won the prize to come and claim it! We convinced them that the 'winner' was a 5 month old baby who won't claim anything in the world as hers for another few months. Finally, the prize was ours! It was a package of various cosmetic items from an obscure Japanese company which mostly sells in Sri Lanka. Not bad. Hey, my daughter must now be famous in Japan and Sri Lanka too. What an achievement!!!