Winning Writeups by the Winners of Editor's Choice
Our winners are -
1. Dr. Arwa Saifi
Title - Family Bonds in Changing Times
There was a time when families did not need reminders to stay connected. Conversations happened naturally over steaming cups of tea, shared meals, and long evenings spent together on terraces, verandas, or living room floors. Children waited eagerly for their parents to return home from work, grandparents narrated stories from another era, and cousins turned ordinary afternoons into unforgettable memories. Life was not perfect then either, but relationships often felt warmer because people truly made time for one another.
Today, the world has changed faster than anyone imagined. Technology has made life convenient, yet somewhere in the middle of endless notifications, deadlines, and digital distractions, many relationships have quietly become distant. Ironically, we are more connected online than ever before, but emotionally, many people feel lonelier. Families sit together at the same dining table while scrolling through different screens. Messages have replaced conversations, and quick reactions have replaced heartfelt emotions.
Modern life has undoubtedly brought opportunities and growth. People move to different cities and countries for education, careers, and better futures. Parents work tirelessly to provide comfort to their children, while children themselves face academic pressure, social expectations, and the constant race to keep up with the world. In all this chaos, family bonds are often taken for granted until life reminds us how important they truly are.
Changing times have also changed the definition of family in many ways. Earlier, joint families were common, where grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins lived together under one roof. Today, nuclear families have become the norm. While smaller families provide independence and privacy, they sometimes miss the emotional support system that larger families naturally offer. A child growing up today may have every modern gadget, but may not experience the joy of listening to bedtime stories from grandparents or playing carefree games with cousins during summer holidays.
At the same time, it would be unfair to say that family values have disappeared completely. In fact, many people today are trying harder than ever to preserve relationships despite busy lives. A daughter studying abroad still video calls her parents every night. A father, exhausted after work, still finds time to help his child with homework. Siblings separated by distance continue to celebrate each other’s achievements through heartfelt messages and late-night phone calls. Love has not vanished; it has simply adapted to changing circumstances.
The true strength of a family does not lie in living under the same roof. It lies in understanding, trust, and emotional presence. Sometimes, a simple “How was your day?” can comfort a person more than grand gestures. Families become safe spaces when people feel heard rather than judged. In a world where stress, anxiety, and loneliness are becoming increasingly common, emotional support from family members can heal wounds that words cannot explain.
One of the biggest challenges in modern families is the lack of time. Everyone seems busy chasing goals, careers, and responsibilities. However, relationships cannot survive on convenience alone. They need effort. A family meal without phones, a short evening walk together, celebrating small moments, or simply listening patiently can slowly rebuild emotional closeness. Bonds do not strengthen through expensive gifts but through genuine presence.
Another noticeable change is the growing generation gap between parents and children. Older generations often struggle to understand the fast-paced digital world, while younger people sometimes fail to understand the experiences and sacrifices of their elders. This gap creates misunderstandings, frustration, and emotional distance. Yet, when both generations choose patience over ego, beautiful connections are formed. Elders carry wisdom from experience, while the younger generation brings fresh perspectives and energy. Families flourish when both learn from one another instead of competing to be right.
Difficult times often reveal the real meaning of family. During illness, grief, financial struggles, or emotional breakdowns, it is the family that usually stands beside us. Friends, social media, and temporary distractions may offer momentary comfort, but genuine care from loved ones has a different kind of strength. Even silent support from family members can make a person feel less alone in the darkest moments.
In changing times, family bonds may not look the same as they once did, but their importance remains unchanged. The world outside will continue to evolve, lifestyles will continue to transform, and technology will continue to advance. Yet, at the end of exhausting days, most people still search for warmth, understanding, and belonging. That feeling of being loved without conditions is what makes family irreplaceable.
Perhaps the need of the hour is not to return to the past, but to carry forward its emotional values into the future. Families today may communicate differently, live differently, and face different struggles, but kindness, respect, empathy, and togetherness are timeless. Relationships survive not because life is easy, but because people choose each other despite the difficulties.
In the end, family bonds are like the roots of a tree. Even when storms arrive and seasons change, strong roots quietly hold everything together.
Author’s Note:
In a rapidly changing world, relationships often become secondary to responsibilities and routines. This blog is a gentle reminder that while technology and lifestyles may evolve, human emotions remain the same. Sometimes, all a family truly needs is a little more time, understanding, and love.
2. Priyanka Bhandarkar
Title - AVATAAR
Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, there was a pond. The Pond was invisible to the naked eye. Therefore, the Pond was part of the National Treasure and was heavily guarded by a creature known as the Wild Boar.
The inhabitants of the planet were only the Frogs and Snakes. They lived on the land.
These were the only beings in the Universe or Space. Both of them had magical powers. The Frogs and the Snakes were descendants of the sun. At this time, The Universe was still being made. The sun is the initial source of energy, which provides energy for everything living on the planet.
A Food Chain refers to the order of events in an ecosystem where one living organism eats another organism, and later that organism is consumed by another larger organism. A Food Chain shows us how every living organism is dependent on other organisms for survival. It explains the path of energy. A Food Chain consists of Carnivores, herbivores, and Omnivores.
One day, a ball fell into the pond. The Frog Princess went inside the water to retrieve the ball, and then the magic began. The other Frogs, who were earlier afraid of the pond, made the pond their home.
But there was one problem. The Snakes followed suit. The Sun God cursed the snakes and the frogs. They had to live both on water and the land. The invisible pond became visible with the co-existence of living creatures in the Ecosystem.
Slowly, many more Ponds emerged. Thus, Water became available on the Planet.
The Snakes and Frogs are called Amphibians in the Scientific world. They can live on both land and water.
The moral to be learned–
LIFE GOES ON.
PART 2 -
I suddenly fell from my bed. Maybe I was dreaming. I slowly opened my eyes and began screaming. It was raining. On the window, I found the mark of a hand. The window had blood stains all over it. I crawled on the floor and made my way towards the window. My legs were not working. They felt heavy. I opened the window and peeped outside. Against the moonlight, I could somehow make out a face. But it had the face of a Frog. And had the tongue of a snake moving all over the face, licking itself. This was horrible. The thing pointed its hand at me. And I further noticed that it had the feet of a chicken. It was wearing a cloak. Rising above the Earth, this beast was moving towards the window. I immediately shut the window and latched it.
The neighbours had gone on a holiday to China. My parents would be returning late after a meeting at the office. I could not even run. I had a high fever and found it difficult to breathe. I began coughing severely.
My eyes fell on the comic book I had picked up earlier to read. A thought flashed into my mind. I lifted the book and threw it at the mirror.
I picked up the receiver of the telephone and dialled the office number of my parents. It was not working. My eyes fell on the calendar. It was the year 2019, fourteen days past my birthday celebrations. Where was I? Why was I in quarantine? What was the world coming to? I could hear the sound of an ambulance, or maybe it was all in my mind. I was hearing voices. I could imagine the people around me wearing masks and queer outfits which had a shield, or maybe I was ill? There was no answer to this new predicament.
I ended up removing my clothes.
I saw myself in the mirror. I had the webbed feet of a chicken. And suddenly my legs began to rotate. I was able to turn my eyes all around just like a Chameleon. I was horrified. My face looked like a Frog. I found myself eating insects which were flying around the tubelight. A Football was lying at the foot of my bed. There was a basketball in the dustbin nearby. And I found a volleyball in the nearby closet.
I put my mask on and slowly made my way towards the door. There was nobody on the road. There was a Batmobile in the garage. There was also a BMW standing near the gates of my house. And I was keen enough to observe a Maruti 800 passing by. The Shops were closed. The people were flashing torches and ringing bells. I was thirsty for a cup of Dalgona coffee. The thing was still following me as I tried to walk briskly down the road.
A Lockdown was being imposed. The Novel Coronavirus had struck the World.
PART 3 -
The universe began as a tiny dense matter after the explosion of the Big Bang. As time passed, the matter cooled, and more diverse kinds of particles began to form, which took the shape of the present solar system
But the prominent question arises whether there is life to be found on planets other than the Earth?. And many scientists believe that there is life to be found on other planets. Prokaryotes were the earliest life forms which fed on carbon compounds that were accumulating in Earth's early oceans. Moons of Jupiter and Saturn were assumed to harbour such oceans. An exoplanet is any planet outside our solar system, also called a rogue planet, that orbits a star just like our sun.
In 2015, NASA confirmed that liquid water flowed intermittently on present-day Mars. The Cassini mission discovered that an ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. And with Space Exploration, we have come to pursue life most uniquely.
Telescopes, Space probes, rovers, satellites, spaceships, and robots are some of the upgraded technologies being used to explore life and for research in the most subtle forms. The early Earth had no ozone layer, had no atmosphere and was probably hot. And there was no free oxygen. 250 million years ago marked the emergence of Dinosaurs. They became extinct because of an event that marked the end of them, making a huge fork in the timeline of life on Earth. Yet life continued...…….
A gradual increase in the overall temperature of the Earth has been attributed to the greenhouse effect over the past century. The change has disturbed the Climatic Pattern on Earth. With the increase in population of the Earth, the volume of fossil fuels burned has contributed to a global disaster in the form of forces of the Earth, which, in nature, is going against nature. Nature is dynamic, and Mankind must learn.
Earth absorbs almost 75% of the solar energy reaching its surface, thereby increasing its temperature. Some of the energy is radiated back into the atmosphere. The gases present in the atmosphere, for example, methane, carbon dioxide, water vapour and chlorofluorocarbons, are called greenhouse gases. They absorb heat, thereby restricting heat from escaping the atmosphere, thereby causing Global Warming. This will result in melting of Polar ice caps and flooding of the coastal areas, increasing the incidence of diseases such as dengue, malaria, yellow fever, etc. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking, plant and animal ranges have shifted, trees are flowering sooner, change in migration patterns, seasons are changing including the atmosphere which is getting depleted and there is periodic modification of Earth with the new normal setting in as anthropological changes with interaction in chemical, geological and biological variations within the system of the Earth.No two years are exactly alike nor any two centuries nor any two millenia.
Allow yourself to grieve the "old" normal. It is very human to miss the old days, and as with any change, it is very easy to feel a sense of loss. We are facing the New Normal, which includes Forest fires and prolonged droughts.
With the onset of COVID-19, there has been a change, but it is expected to become normal or typical soon; however, it is different from the change that has been experienced. Queuing is now the New normal. Masks and gloves have become common, depending on where you live in the world. Public transportation and seating in hotels and theatres have changed with Social distancing in place. A new normal is a state to which an economy, society, etc., settles following a crisis, which differs from a situation before the start of a crisis.
The term has been employed in relation to World War 1, the September 11 attacks, the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the aftermath of the 2008-2012 global recession, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
("Double, Double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
---(William Shakespeare,Macbeth)
3. Archita Kumar
Title - Where Silence Blooms
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