This story is selected as Editor’s Choice
Kids Short Story – A bite of chocolaty ant
Photo credit: Jusben from morguefile.com
Oye Ladki
There was once a little girl who was the daughter of the streets. On the streets she had rolled, crawled, taken her first baby steps and eaten the first rotten morsel of food.
Everyday she would find a kind soul who would call out and say, “oye ladki! Come and take this.” And she would go scurrying on her scruffy and bruised li’l feet to fetch the remnants of a yesterday’s meal.
Yes, she was called Oye Ladki; never been known by any other name.
So one day Oye Ladki was strolling down the street when she came across a piece of bread lying in the puddle. “Never tasted that,” she thought and picked it up. It was a soggy li’l piece that almost melted in her dirty hands. Even so she managed to get some soaking bits into her mouth.
“Nothing. Just water,” she said while commenting on the taste. She was hungry.
Sweety
“I want it! I want it! I want it!” Sweety shrieked.
“No beta, that’s dirty. Chheee! Throw it! I will get you a new chocolate bar. Nice, big one,” Mommy cajoled.
“Whaaaa!” tiny Sweety let out a cry.
A half-eaten chocolate bar lay abandoned on the road outside the sari shop. Mommy wanted to buy a golden dotted sari from the shop. And after spending fifteen minutes on lecturing about how dirty the chocolate bar lying in the puddle was Mommy finally got a meek li’l nod from her daughter. Satisfied Mommy decided to enter the shop and begin her sari hunt.
Sweety was about to turn around and follow Mommy when she saw a brown girl coming hippity-hoppity her way. The chocolate was still lying there, soaking in the shallow puddle of rain water.
“She is coming to get the chocolate!” Sweety thought with alarm when she saw the brown girl’s line of focus, “But that’s mine!”
The brown girl had now reached the bar and picked it up. She was about to take the first bite when Sweety snatched the bar – dripping wet and gooey – from her.
“MINE!” Sweety yelled.
The brown girl stared back at Sweety with a blank look.
Oye Ladki
“I picked it up first. Why did she take it from me? Will she make noise if I snatch it back? The topiwala with the stick will hit me if she does,” Oye Ladki thought and didn’t know what to do.
The girl in the colourful frock and shoes with flower was looking intently at the chocolate bar. “What’s she staring at?” Iye Ladki thought and looked at the bar. Stuck on one gooey end of the bar was a big black ant.
“Poor ant,” Oye Ladki thought, “Does the girl with dotted frock want to eat it?”
Oye Ladki decided it was best not to intervene. “Can’t stop her or the topiwala will hit me,” she thought with a forlorn expression.
“Eat, eat!” Oye Ladki coaxed the flower shoed girl.
Sweety
“That big black thing on the chocolate is moving!” Sweety thought with horror, “But if I don’t eat it, the brown girl will.”
Sweety was in a fix. Sharing wasn’t her favourite passtime.
“It’s a chocolate after all. And anything on chocolate has been nicey nice so far.”
With that thought Sweety opened her mouth wide and bit a big chunk off the bar; the chunk with the black ant stuck on top.
__END__
