On the road, he lay injured,

Blood oozing out of his head.

He needed help, cure and water,

or soon he would be dead.

Streams of people passed him by,

not one heard his anguished cry.

They carried on with their jobs

and paid no heed to his sobs.

Helpless, he lay in the horrid sun,

losing hope he had begun.

At last, a man approached him,

He bent down and robbed him

Not just of his money and chain, But of his desire to live again.

He shut his eyes, began to say,

"God take my life away.

"I don’t want to be a part

of a world which has an, iron heart".

"Search your own," said a voice

He did so, he had no choice.

What he found made him sad,

He was equally sinful and bad.

"What right have you to ask for mercy?"

said the booming voice again.

"You don’t deserve deliverance,

You will have to bear this pain.

Sinful acts have a price to pay,

You shall live in this cruel world,

till your sentence is done away."

So the man was rescued.

He lived on.

He scrubbed his soul,

Till his sins were gone.

He succeeded in his task,

His sins were forgiven at last.

He died years later,

With a smile, soft and faint.

From a living devil,

he became a dying saint.

Richa Sarin, Class-XI (Non-Med)
SGGS School, Chandigarh.

My dream

Once I happened to see a dream,

I dream of India advancing with full steam.

No schooling, no oral education,

All that we had was online education.

Everybody had his own plane,

And no day was dull and plain.

Things of love still survived,

Keeping the hopes of humanity alive.

With this, my dream came to an end.

Raghav Jha, Class-10,
D.A.V. Model School, Chandigarh.