A MARBLE STORY

I was very excited as I was selected as one of the participants going to take part in the National story writing competition. My teacher told me that I had to write a story on any experience I had ever encountered and after completing it, email it to the school by the day after tomorrow. I was very happy and kept thinking about what I would get if I won the competition.

Once I reached home, I started thinking about an experience on which I would write the story. There were millions of experiences that I would have encountered in my 14-year life but I could not remember even one at the time when I needed to recall them to write a story based on them. It seemed as if my mind went blank. Two hours went and still, I couldn’t think of a story to write. I decided that I should just go out and breathe some fresh air and relax so that I could write at least something.

At that very moment, my mother returned from the market and stopped me. She then started digging through her bag and removed a small bag and handed it to me, when I checked it I was overjoyed. It was a packet having multi-colored marbles in it. Having kept those in my pocket I went out of the house to play. That’s when I saw my neighbor Joshua taking out his dog for a walk. He had a golden retriever which was very cute and I liked it very much. For a while, I started playing with it and sometimes in between would talk to Joshua.

While we were playing with the dog, a man came running towards us looking backward and crashed into us. The dog started barking on the man and climbed on him. Joshua controlled the dog and pulled it aside and we then apologized to the man about the same. But he seemed in a hurry and just left running without saying anything. Joshua exclaimed, ”What a queer man was he !” That’s when I realized that the man’s wallet had fallen off his pocket during the incident and I started calling for him but he was too far and couldn’t hear us so we started running behind him but he was too fast for us to catch up with him.

Luckily he entered a house on the street. So we followed him there. When we rang the bell we realized that it was not working, so we started looking through the window for him but he couldn’t be seen. Suddenly a hatch opened up on the floor and we saw him climbing up with another man. On having seen this I could feel something fishy was going on so we decided to hide our profile for a while and see what is going on. The other man said that not many notes had been printed today as the machine was not working. Joshua and I both looked at each other as we had understood that the counterfeiting of notes was going on. On hearing the conversation further we got to know that they were going to meet again at 5:00 in the evening as the technician would have repaired the machine by then.

Without wasting any time Joshua and I sprinted to the nearest police station and informed the inspector of the police-in-charge of the counterfeiting and the racket being carried out. Immediately he told us to load up in the police jeep and lead them to the spot where we had seen all this happen as there was only five minutes remaining to 5. On reaching there all of them took their positions in the backside of the house along with us. Suddenly the two people entered the house and went into the hatch. Once they were inside the inspector went inside and gave the others their positions and they all pointed the guns towards the hatch. The inspector along with 4 more men and Joshua went into the hatch and surprised the culprits. The police told them to stop their work and that they were under arrest. The policemen held the culprits’ hands behind their backs and pointed a gun at them.

Suddenly one of the people there snatched away one of the policeman’s guns and aimed it at the policeman. On the other hand, I and the other policemen who were upstairs were unknown of the fact of what was going on. I was getting bored, so I removed my marbles to see them. I emptied them all on my hand but there were too many of them and they fell on the floor, I started picking them up one by one. That’s when the man who had a gun aimed at a policeman arose from the hatch. Luckily he slipped on the marbles scattered on the floor and the other policemen who were standing with me aimed their gun at him and he was arrested along with his comrades. We were also thanked by the police for our help and told us that we were responsible residents of India.

On returning home after this adventure I remembered about my competition and decided to write what had happened to us just now. I sat down, wrote it down and emailed it to my school. The judges of the competition liked it very much and I won the first prize in the competition in the whole of India. It was a proud moment for me. The marbles would remain with me forever so that it would always remind me of this incident.