Highly Commended Story - Keep Your Eyes Around You

“Keep Your Eyes Around You” by Akshita Jain, Shree Vallabh Sanskar Dham's Shreemati Shobhaben Pratapbhai School, India, is the Highly Commended story in the sub-junior category of the second biannual Short Story Contest 2018.

Akshita Jain, from Class II is a student of Shree Vallabh Sanskar Dham’s Smt. S.P. Patel Day Boarding School, Pardi, Valsad. She is good in art & craft work. She likes to read storybooks, sometimes books of famous sports persons also. Some of her favourite activities are storytelling and drawing. She loves to talk with people and enjoys playing and reading good books. She learns karate and she is a good actor too.

Keep Your Eyes Around You

Once upon a time, there was a man named Mohanlal in a village, Sohangadh. He had three sons named Jay, Ajay and Vijay. Though he was very poor, he taught only one thing to his children, “To observe everything around you properly”.

After few days, Mohanlal passed away and the three brothers had no means of livelihood. So they decided to go to some other town and search for a job. They started their journey. On their way, they saw some soldiers looking around in search of something.

Seeing this, Jay asked them, “Are you in search of a camel?” Soldiers replied “Yes”.

Hearing this Ajay asked, “Was the camel blind with one eye?” Again the soldiers replied, “Yes”.

Then Vijay asked, “Was an old lady and a little girl riding on the camel?”

“Yes” soldiers replied again. They then said, “Yes, Yes, it means you have seen them, so please let us know where they are?”

“No” the three bothers answered instantly.

“You are lying, we will arrest you and present you in the kingdom,” said the soldiers.

The soldiers arrested them and presented in the kingdom.

The king asked them about the truth. They replied, “It was just our observation.”

They then explained it one by one.

Jay said, “I saw camel’s foot print on the road. So I said there was a camel”

Ajay said, “I saw that grass of one side of the road was eaten and the other was untouched. So I said it was blind with one eye.”

Vijay said, “I saw that there were four legs foot print on the way but at one place there were eight legs out of which four were of camel and rest four were of humans two of big size and two of small size. Besides the footprints there were bangles of different size. So I got to know there might be two females one lady and one small girl.”

The king was very impressed with them, but he wanted to test them once again.

The king asked them to take rest in the Guest House and meet him the next day in the kingdom.

Next day they were given a wooden box to check what was in it.

Jay first took it and examined it. He said “There are some round objects inside the box”.

Then Ajay said, “There might be pomegranate inside”.

Then Vijay said, “The pomegranate is raw.”

The king asked, “How did you know about this?”

Jay replied, “The objects were rolling inside the box, so I said that there are some round objects.

Ajay replied, “As there are many gardens of pomegranate in your kingdom, I assumed there might be pomegranate inside the box”.

Vijay replied, “As there are two months still left for their ripening, I said that they are raw”.

The king was now impressed and satisfied with the answers, and kept them as ministers of the kingdom.

Moral: Observation is the best key to success.