The moment she entered the strange school, Huma felt nauseated.

She felt as she wasn’t ready for what she’d come for. She seems to have forgotten all that she had memorised. Her head started spinning, but she gathered her wits and headed towards her allotted classroom.

This school, where her board exams were to be held, was small and peculiar. The walls were painted pale yellow and the roof was very dusty. There was wild grass growing all around the place. The classrooms were small too, with old-fashioned blackboards. The seats creaked and there was paint peeling off the walls.

Huma searched for her seat, K-5. Finally she found it. The seat was slightly uncomfortable, but the desk was just as high as she wished it to be. Surprisingly, there was just one invigilator in the room, and Huma wondered if any of the candidates had come prepared with any cheating material.

Shaking her head, she pushed the thought away and tried to focus. The invigilator distributed the exam papers and in ten minutes, the exam began.

Huma took a deep breath, opened the exam paper and started unloading her poor stressed, overloaded brain.

When she reached the third page, it was almost as if her heart had stopped beating. She read the question over and over again.

The question read: “Draw a diagram of (i) Blood cells, (ii) A bacterial cell.”

Huma felt like crying as she recalled her mother’s words from just the day before.

“Huma, please go through these two diagrams, too.”

“Oh, mum! Don’t worry, they won’t come in my exam. They haven’t even come once in the last ten years.”

“I know, but just go through these, ok? I have a feeling these are going in your exam.”

“Oh, fine. I will.” But she forgot to do so.

‘Mum was right,’ she said to herself. ‘I wish I’d listened to her.’

She tried recalling all she could, then tried drawing it, but she knew it was useless. She tried peaking into her partner’s paper, but the girl had hidden her sheet well. Just then, the teacher caught her looking around.

“Hey, girl, you are cheating!”

“No, ma’am,” said Huma panicking. “I’m looking for my pencil.”

“Then don’t peek into others’ paper. Eyes should be on your sheet!”

With a heart beating like a rabbit’s, Huma vowed not to even think about cheating again.

She turned back to her paper and continued her exam. The rest of the paper went quite well. When Huma reached back home that day, she started crying the moment she saw her mother.

“I’m so sorry mum! I wish I’d listened to you. Those two diagrams came in the paper! And I hadn’t even practiced making them. I’m sorry. From now, I’ll listen to everything you say. You surely always say the right thing!”

Huma’s mother smiled and said gently, “Well, turns out, you’ve learned your lesson quite well. Now go prepare for your next paper. And don’t forget to also practice from that list of questions I gave you.”

“Sure,” said Huma. “That’s the first thing I’m going to do now!”

And because Huma had listened to her mother this time, she felt really pleased on the next examination day, for eight questions out of ten in her paper were the ones her mother had urged her to study well.

Grinning, she hugged her mother when she reached home. “I’ve learnt a very important lesson,” she said. “We must always listen to our elders!”

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 29th, 2019