Every day, around 4 pm, Chica could be found at the window of her room. She would be in for about an hour and when she came out, she would be in a very funny mood. Her mother was perplexed at this and one day decided to go down to the root of this mystery.

So one day when Chica was, as usual at the window, her mother, entered Chica’s room and peeked out of the window too. When Chica saw this, she quickly turned her face, but not before the game was up!

“Chica, why do you sit here every day?” mama asked. Chica didn’t want to reply, but had to reply to her mother and said “Mama, I want to learn how to ride a bike like these girls there”. “So what’s stopping you?” replied mama. “I’ve heard you fall when you learn to ride, so I am scared”, this from a scared Chica.

“Nonsense” countered mama, “Yes, you will fall down a couple of times while learning to ride a bike, but that is part and parcel of the learning process. If you have the will to learn, you will learn”.

So Chica decided to start learning to ride a bike. The next day, she went down when she saw the girls riding their bikes and asked them to help her learn. The girls were happy to teach her and with so many teachers around her, Chica quickly learnt to ride. Of course, she did fall a few times, but remembered what her mama told her and didn’t bother too much about that.

A week after Chica had learnt to ride a bike, there was a surprise waiting for her – a pink, shiny new bicycle just for her. Chica was overjoyed and soon was happily playing on the bike with all her new friends!

One day when Chika and Chica reached school, they found the whole school abuzz with some exciting news. The king of Rhysunds, the forest where they lived was going to come to their school’s annual prize distribution and was going to give a special prize for a very special competition. This competition was a story-writing competition to commemorate the golden jubilee year of their school as the school was now 50 years old! There were very cool prizes to be won and the best one was a special plane ride with the King himself in his Majesty’s airplane. Now, his Majesty King Rivas had a very special airplane which Chiki had only seen from a distance and a chance of actully going inside the plane for a ride was too much of a temptation for him. “I’m going to write the best story that anyone can write and i will win this competition, you just wait and watch” Chiki told Chica, his friends, his teachers and anyone who spoke to him that day.

Later in the day when the teacher spoke about the competition, she told them the deadline which was a week from that day. The stories had to be written neatly on a paper and handed over along with the submission form. Saying this she passed along the submission forms to all the students asking them all to take part and even if they didn’t win, the experience would stand then in good stead.

Chiki took the form and went home, not before telling the bus Aunty and the canteen uncle his plans. Once home, he told his mother, “Mama, tonight after dinner, I will go to my room and start working on my story, so don’t disturb me. I am going to write such a wonderful story that his Majesty will have to give me the first prize”

After dinner, Chiki did go his room to think about his story. “My story has to be different and wonderful, so that I win the competition” “i wonder how the plane will look when I enter it?” “I hope I don’t become sick in the plane when I enter it” thoughts like this kept coming to his mind and all thoughts of the competition flew out as he fantasised on what he would do with the king once he won the competition and got to ride the plane. He soon fell asleep and when he woke up the next day he consoled himself that he still had six days in which to write out the story.

“Chiki, have you completed your story?” mama asked him once he was back from school the next day. “No mama, I will think out my story today and write it up later” Chiki replied and as soon as he finished his homework and dinner, he went to his room to work on his story. He did think of a wonderful story, one that involved airplanes, dinosaurs, race cars and everything that a boy could dream about. The next day, he excitedly went to his sister ad asked her if she had finished her story. “No Chiki, I am still working on it”, Chica replied, but I just can’t seem to get story to have a good ending”. “Show it to me Chica, maybe I can help” offered Chiki and he gave his sister the perfect ending to her story.

The next few days flew by with homework, swimming and the myriad other classes that Chica and Chiki went to and every day Chica and his mother would ask him about the story and Chiki would reply “I will write it down tomorrow, I promise”. The day before the children had to submit the story, their teacher reminded them about the deadline the next day and asked them all the make sure they had neatly written their story and filled up the submission form that went with it. The forms needed to have their parent’s signature in it too.

Chica and Chiki went home and made sure their mama signed the forms for both of them. Chica then asked Chiki if he had finished writing his story. Chiki had loads of homework that day, so he said he will do it once the homework is done. Later that night, once the homework was complete, Chiki started to write his story. But he was very tired and it was late and soon he was asleep with the story half done. The next morning he woke up and frantically started writing the story, but because he was in a hurry, his handwriting was extremely bad and he missed writing out many points in his story.

All the children submitted their stories to the teachers, but Chiki knew that he had not done justice to his story. He also had doubts if he will eventually win the competition. The next few days till the results were in were nailbiting for the whole school. During recess, this was the only topic of discussion between the children. Everywhere they went, it was the competition – at school, in the bus, at the supermarket, at the gym – everywhere! Soon this also percolated down to the parents and they too got sucked into ‘The Discussion’.

At last the day of the results arrived. The King arrived at the school for the annual prize distribution and Head of the school went up to the stage. “We have had a lot of very interesting stories for our competition. In fact, there was one story which started out very well, but around the halfway point, we could not make out what the author wanted to say. Anyway, in a competition, there will be just winner, so the winner is….Chica!” Chiki was very happy for his sister, but also very, very sad that he did not win the competition. Of course, he knew the head of the school was refering to him, but there was nothing he could do at this point.

Chica went up to the stage to receive the award from His Majesty. Once there, she whispered something into his ears and His Majesty smiled and nodded. Then he took the microphone and made an announcement “I just heard that there is a little boy who so desperately wanted to have a ride in my new plane, that he made up a fantastic story, but unfortunately, he did not finish his work on time, so could not win. Chica would like her brother Chiki to have the ride in the plane instead of her as he helped her with the ending of her story and also because although he did think of a wonderful story, he could not finish writing it. Can Chiki come up on the stage now?” Chiki very self consciously went up to the stage and the king continued speaking, “Because Chica so generously decided to give up her prize for Chiki, I will take both the children with me on the plane”.

Chica, Chiki and their parents were thrilled to hear about the King’s offer. A week weeks later, a big car came to take the chilren to the airport where the King was waiting to take them on a spin in his new airplane. Chiki and chica enjoyed the trip. At the end they were showered with gifts by the King and went home happy.

Chiki vowed that in the future, he will never do things at the last minute and will always make aure that he has ample time to finish his work.