A WARM CHRISTMAS

Sharmila Roy Ghosal

A painting competition was being organized at Sun Flower school in Green Forest, on Sunday. Timmy rabbit smiled smugly to himself. “I will surely win the contest and get the prize money of Rs.3000/”. He thought to himself.
Timmy was a very lazy rabbit and he hated going to school. Most of the days he pretended to have a headache or a stomach ache and stayed back home instead of going to school.

However he was a wizard with the brush and no one could beat him in drawing or painting.
“I will become a painter when I grow up, bookish knowledge is not that important for me,” Timmy would often brag to his friends.

Sunday dawned bright and clear, all the participants equipped with their pencils, erasers and colors came for the exhibition.
Timmy decided to draw a scene showing Christmas in Australia. First he drew a kangaroo and then several houses. Next using the white paint that he had Timmy covered the roofs of all houses in white to show it had snowed. Dabs of white paint also showed that the roads were blocked with ice. Timmy drew Father Christmas and wrote on top of a house ‘Merry Christmas’.

‘What a perfect picture’. Timmy thought to himself. He thought of different ways in which to spend the prize money, ‘I will buy a cycle and several toys he thought'.
In the evening accompanied by his parents Timmy went to attend the prize giving ceremony.
The marks had been written on the picture itself. Minus 50 had been scribbled on Timmy’s painting. Timmy stood nonplussed for sometime at a loss to understand the situation.
Soon the chief guest started making the announcements. The 1st prize went to Mona deer for her depiction of a desert scene.

The 2nd prize went to Tuna porcupine for a village scene which was very well drawn.
Ted the bear received the 3rd prize for painting a day at the fair neatly.
The chief guest next spoke about Timmy’s drawing. “It is a perfect picture but I had to minus marks because Christmas in Australia is never white, since it is summer during Christmas. How can there be snow?”
The principal nodded her head she spoke sadly after some time. “Timmy if you had attended your classes regularly, you would know that when it is winter in our part of the hemisphere it is summer in the Southern hemisphere. Fifty marks have to be deducted from your geography paper”.

Tears blinded Timmy’s eyes, what a fool he had been not to have known that one could never be a painter until one had a complete knowledge of his subjects. Attendance in school was a must.
Timmy decided to mend his ways after this. He regularly attended school and paid a lot of attention to his studies.

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