Who stole bhaiya's smile- A summary by Daksha Sai.

 

This story is about depression in children.

Bhaiya had depression and had stopped playing with Chiru. Chiru named Bhaiya’s depression Dukduk the monster who had stolen Bhaiya’s smile. Before this, he would play happily with Chiru. Bhaiya’s parents didn’t understand anything in the beginning. Only Chiru was taking care of Bhaiya. His parents and grandparents did not understand Bhaiya’s problem and gave silly ideas. In the end, Bhaiya started going to a doctor aunty who took care of his depression.

Parents should not dismiss children's emotions.

Summary written by:

Daksha Sai

11-year-old reader

Sun's revenge- by Soham Madhok

One day at dawn, the moon said he wasn't going to set. This meant that the sun wouldn’t be able to rise. The sun became livid with rage and fought with the moon. The moon won the argument. They decided that the sun would rise after 3 days. When the people on Earth heard this, they started to fume and created a fake sun in front of the moon. The moon was disappointed. Then on the dusk of the fourth day, the sun decided to give the moon a taste of its own medicine. The sun didn't set. The moon knew it was no good fighting the sun, so it didn’t rise. Now even the clouds got angry. 

The people who believed in astrolatry were happy that something odd had happened. After four days, the sun decided to set and the moon could rise. So, things were back to normal for everyone. People felt relieved. But the sun was still angry and wanted more vengeance, so it removed a piece of itself and launched the piece at the moon. But here the sun was foolish;  it forgot that the moon revolved around the earth. So when the piece reached where the sun had aimed it to,  the moon had moved and the Earth had reached the spot! As the piece hit the earth, it destroyed mankind.

Now since the only reason the moon was revolving around the Earth was because of the Earth’s gravity, so now the moon had come out of orbit. The sun was burning in wrath, the planets went crazy and now the moon was going to crash the sun. There was something else in the moon’s way. Coming in front of the moon, it was Mercury. Not wanting to crash, the moon embraced for impact, but nothing happened as the moon got pulled by Mercury’s gravity into its orbit. The moon started revolving around Mercury instead of crashing into it. Now that the moon was safe, the sun got even angrier. However angry the sun was, it decided not to attack anymore. 

Written by:

Soham Madhok

Jake and his trophy- By Suhani Madhok

Once there was a monkey named Jake. He was ten years old. He was naughty and smart. He liked to play. When he used to play, he would throw his toys everywhere. One day he won a trophy in school. After he came back from school, he started playing with his toys and trophy. Later, it was time to go down. He went without cleaning up. Once he came back home, he got to know from his mother that he had to show the trophy to his teacher. He ran to his room but he couldn't see it. He searched and searched. Time passed and it was dinner time. Jake went for dinner. After finishing his meal, Jake went to sleep. The next day, he had to show his trophy in school but how could he! He had lost his trophy. He thought, at that moment, he saw something gold. He picked it up and saw it was his trophy. He packed it in his bag and happily went to school.

Written by:

Suhani Madhok

Grandfather on a hunt- by Gia

Alex stared out of the window in boredom. She couldn’t wait to get to her late grandfather’s house! “Mom!” she asked, “are we there yet?” Her mom smiled, “How about I tell you a story?” “There goes my boredom!” Alex said. “I am going to start!” her mom said, “My dead father was actually a pirate, and as you know pirates are scary and hate humanity. And when my father died, he swore to get revenge and kill all humans…”

Alex was getting bored with the story when she reached her grandfather’s house! “I will go down in ten minutes,” she said. Ten minutes later, she went downstairs. “I will have finished the summoning if Alex comes at 5 tomorrow,” Alex heard her mom say. She was very confused. What summoning was her mother talking about? Then, she remembered the book she found one month ago. It contained steps on how to summon a ghost and her mom had written a note in it. It said, ‘Summon father. Important. I’ve done it.’ Alex decided that tomorrow, she would summon her grandfather. The next day, when her mother was out, Laura set up the summoning equipment. She did as the book said and then, on a mirror, in blood, it was written, “I will kill you.” When Alex’s mother got home, she saw the message and screamed. She pulled Alex away from the house and started running. “I’ve been fearing this for 2 years,” she muttered. Alex’s mum was tired when she stopped running. Suddenly, a ghost appeared, surrounded by shadows. Alex’s mum said that she was done hiding. Then, she jumped into the cloud of shadows and disappeared. Forever. Alex stared at the ghost in horror. The ghost wrote in the mud, ‘I will not kill you… for now. My brother will. He… will be doing this later.’ Alex stared at the message in shock and disbelief … and ran away as fast as she could.

Years later, Alex was looking at a picture of her mum and recalling the crazy story of her grandfather. After her mother was “taken” by her grandfather, she and her father, who had not gone on vacation to her grandpa’s house, moved to New York. And, up till now, her great-uncle had not come after her. "Well," thought Alex, “I will have been surviving a ghost for 11 years in May.” And she set down the photo of her mother and walked away from her memories and fear of ghosts.

Written by:

Gia Velingkar

Victim of the dark night: by Tashvi Beria

Mia was sleeping when she heard the wooden flooring in the other room creek. Mia was a 23-year-old who lived independently. She lived quite a normal life. Hearing the creek, she had a jittery feeling that something bad was happening, so she picked up her torch and started to approach the bedroom to see what had happened. She stuttered while saying nothing. What she saw next made her heart come up to her throat. She saw a 6-foot-tall man admiring his knife. Mia's legs were stuck to the ground and her voice was gone. All of a sudden, he looked up. Mia screamed and woke up with a jolt. She was covered with sweat. She was horror-struck. She just considered it a dream and went back to sleep.

The next morning, she had woken up when the milkman arrived. She finished her quotidian routine. Just then, her phone started to ring. She answered it and heard the angry voice of her friend saying, “Mia! You told me that you would have finished the book before 10 a.m. I don’t care if you haven’t finished your work.” She rushed to the door and scuttled as fast as she could. She noticed something odd. All the streets were deserted which was very strange for a Saturday morning. She ignored it and kept walking. Then she saw a shadow cross by at the corner of her eye. She looked to her side, but there was nothing. She looked in the front and saw the same man again. She froze dead, her heart stopped and she screamed. She found herself quivering on the ground. She was befuddled. In a while, dismissing this as her imagination, she got up and returned the book. She went back home and decided to finish some work. She had been working for two hours so she took a break. While she was taking a break, the same incident repeated. She started to scream after seeing the man. This incident kept repeating and started to freak her out. This couldn’t just be a hallucination. She went down and told her friend about this. Her friend was astonished but didn’t really believe it but still agreed to accompany her. They both went to the church to finally put an end to this. When they arrived at the church, Mia’s friend rushed to a perspicacious father and said, “Father, Mia has been seeing things lately.” She narrated the whole story to him. The father said, “I think you're seeing things, my dear. This is not true ”  Mia couldn’t believe it! She stayed and argued for an hour. Not even the father believed her. Mia’s friend then said, “You have been arguing for 1 hour now; give it a rest! It’s late and we should get going.” Mia took her friend’s suggestion and returned home.

She was dead on her feet so she took this opportunity to think about what was happening. It suddenly hit her! History was repeating itself. How could she forget! When she was young, there was a case going on where a serial killer was on the loose. It was a Sunday night when Mia was woken up by the noises of thunder and lightning. Her mom had said, “I will be working till late night and the maid will go  back by 8 p.m, so don’t stay up late.” Mia felt another presence behind her. She looked back to see a tall man wearing all black holding a long sharp knife. She was petrified to realize that there was a serial killer in her house. She scuttered to the kitchen and hid there. She saw a shadow approach closer and closer. She grabbed the knife from the kitchen counter. Everything after that was hazy. She couldn’t really recall what happened but all she knew was that she had gotten rid of the serial killer for good. This had left a scar on her leg. She remembered why she couldn’t dance anymore. She had been dancing for 8 years before this accident. The psycho serial killer had come back. He had never died. He had never left her. She was brought back to reality by a loud crash. Before she could realize what was happening, she heard the words,- “I will never leave you and will have been haunting everybody’s soul for 22 years on the following Sunday. Say your goodbyes because your time is up.”

Written by:

Tashvi Beria