Once again: Judge

Well... I never thought there would be one such day. First, the friends of my class made me the judge for Besuregama, and now, this time officially, I was judging a 'kavi sammelan' on the Hindi divas, that is, today, 14th September. I had no idea I could be a judge in two events in one week. Simply a hilarious experience. And once again, I come to know that judging in live events is really tough. The people who always used to say that 'It was a tough decision...' are not joking. They really mean it, seems to me now. This time, I had to judge among 13 people for 3 positions. And after the calculations on the basis of 4 criteria what came out was 5 people sharing top 3 positions.
Though, now I do not remember the poems which got the prizes, I have some idea how the poems were. And how were the people who recited. I still find so many poets who write well but fail to get their credit because of improper recitation, or rather, lack of confidence. And I once again felt that girls do better when it comes to stage performances. I always used to think the same during my days of school while most of the winners used to be girls. (That doesn't mean I never won prizes there)
When I reached the stage to announce the result, I told them what I and the secretary of the organising association (Hindi Literary Association) had talked when I was invited. He had said that judging won't be difficult for me as I had been editor for the college magazine, Splash. But truly speaking, editing is ten times easy. I had to put the 5 best poems/articles in the magazine. And if I liked 6, I had to ask the management for an extra page. Here every single mark was important. So it was an altogether different, much tougher job.
I ended the speech and the program saying that their job was not simple and all these poets/writers had to keep on going, because their pens do not give words to just their own thoughts, they gave words to all those people's words.