All those things that don’t belong to me!

It was a happy group of noisy chattering children that barged into the class room-it was the first day of the year and excited screams of laughter rang out from all the classes. It was good to be back in school! There was a new admission in the sixth grade. A boy looking a little uncomfortable in his crisp white uniform sat at the last row, pretending to look out of the window as the others gazed at him curiously.

It took a few days for Rahul, for that was his name, to settle down. He was a friendly boy with a direct smile and a ‘May I help you’ attitude. All the sixth graders took an instant liking to him. Rahul was a smart boy, too! When the teachers asked questions in the class he was ready with the answers, hardly giving the others a chance to open their mouths. In short Rahul was a treasure chest of ideas!

Few weeks passed by. And…strange things started happening. Students’ belongings started disappearing mysteriously.

Vasant lost his science text book. It was not in his bag; his friends had not borrowed it and it was definitely not with the teacher. It had simply vanished into thin air! A few days later Swetha missed her Hindi text book. She hunted around frantically for it. She rummaged the books cupboard, spilling over all the other books, much to the Hindi Mam’s chagrin. But it was not there! And one day Arun’s lunch box went missing along with his parotta and potatoes! The Ayahamma found the box on the shelf the next morning, empty and washed clean!  Pens, pencils, geometry boxes and gum bottles – all seemed to take wings and fly!

‘That’s strange! Someone seems to be stealing your things,’ said the class teacher when the children complained to her. ‘All of you are very good children. I have never faced such problems earlier!’

‘We too’ said Ankhit. ‘That is why we were wondering if you could do something to find the culprit. We suspect that someone new…might be stealing our things’.

‘It is very rude to accuse people like that without proof, Ankhit,’ said the class teacher sternly. ‘This is a very serious matter. I suggest that you students should deal with it yourselves without blaming anybody directly.’

As days passed, Rahul noticed a change in the class. Whenever Mam asked Rahul an answer for a particularly puzzling problem, before he could answer, one of the students would get up and say, ‘Mam, here’s the answer…’ Rahul could only gape! The same thing happened in every period. His classmates seemed to have the answers to all questions and Rahul could hardly get his chance to answer. One day Rahul got irritated. ‘Guys, what has got into you? Why do you answer all the questions that the teachers ask me? You are stealing the chances that I get!’

‘Stealing is bad, isn’t it Rahul?’ asked Ankhit with a twinkle in his eye.

The other children could not help but notice the fear in Rahul’s face. ‘Well, er.. It’s just that I answer the questions because I know the answers,’ he said. ‘We could also answer the questions if somebody stopped pinching our books and gave us the chance to read properly,’ said George promptly.

‘Keep quiet, George,’ said Ravi. ‘Rahul, we have never lost our books all these years. I was shocked to find the Math book that I had lost, in your bag. That is why we decided to make you see the truth.’ ‘Yes, that was stupid of me,’ said Rahul. ‘I thought it would be fun to make you hunt for your things. But I guess the joke went too far.’

‘Friendship forgives!’ cried the others. ‘It’s good to be good again!’

From the Net:

A little boy asked his friend, ‘What is friendship?’

He replied, ‘Friendship is when you steal my chocolates every day from my bag and yet I still keep them in the same place.