Every day starts with a beautiful morning and ends in the coldness of the night. Our life is similar, isn’t it? When we are born it’s the dawn, with life just beginning. You don’t know how the rest of the day will be like, and similarly you cannot predict how your life is going to be.

Your childhood is like the morning. Life is beautiful with the shimmering sun and with all the love you want. You laugh, talk, sing, dance and make mistakes, but you are always praised.

Then the noon comes. You have hassles, troubles, and limitations. You make mistakes and those are pointed out. The sun is up there still, but the scorching heat does not really let you feel comfortable, does it? Singing and dancing are still there, but the struggle for existence dominates it.

Then comes the dusk. There is no sun, just a faint light. That faint light heralds the upcoming darkness. Singing, dancing is all lost and happiness is there but the actual satisfaction seems to have long vanished.

Now you make mistakes and no body really cares.

Then it’s night. The sun has long settled and you become a child again, but a child whose happiness seems to be an illusion .You long for the bright morning to come again. You make mistakes and you are humiliated. That is when you fall down as a shooting star and become cold and rise up again to take a place in the sky and look down on others who are struggling through the dawn, morning, dusk and night.

— Apurwa Prasad,

Class X, St Mary’s Higher Secondary School