Day after day the newspaper was full with reports of children being kidnapped from various areas and the thought of it stabbed my mother like a sword.

The result of such widespread news was unfortunate for kids and that included me as well, so I was banned from going to the park in the evening and playing with my friends. The only time I left home was when I went to school with my daddy. I didn’t have friends at school with whom I could play. So I felt alone there. Back at home, I felt like I was in a cage.

Sometimes, I would play with my younger brother but I did not enjoy it a bit as he was just two years old, so his idea of games were throwing the ball, running, catching, tickling, etc. This made me more dejected as I had no one to play with.

One day, I was sitting in the corner of my room and crying over my boring life when I remembered a friend which lived in my cupboard. I took it out. It was ‘My personal diary’.

I opened it and read the things I had written there. In no time I found myself picking up a pen and pouring out my feelings in it.

“I wish I were a beautiful bird. How nice it would have been to fly in the sky around the world! There would have been nothing difficult and hard for me to do as I would have always lived freely. Oh God! Please turn me into a bird.”

“I wish I were a beautiful bird. How nice it would have been to fly in the sky around the world! There would have been nothing difficult and hard for me to do as I would have always lived freely. Oh God! Please turn me into a bird.”

At that moment, a hand came and seized my diary and my pen. I looked up. Standing there was my mother. I saw tears in her eyes shining like pearls. And then I knew it. She had read what I had written in my diary over my shoulder. But when did she enter the room? And how?

While I was thinking all this, my mother reached out for my diary and wrote something in it and then gave it back.

She had added two more lines: “But what would happen if someone comes and catches me? Then who would come and fetch me free?”

I was dumbstruck. How come I never thought of that? I looked around to see my mother but she wasn’t there. At that moment my eyes dropped a newspaper on my bed. I saw the newspaper with the following headline:

“Dangerous gang of kidnappers arrested. All kidnapped children return home.”

And there was a note attached to the newspaper which read:

“You may go to the park everyday now.

Your mother”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I ran to my mother, who had gone back to kitchen. When she saw me, she said in a sweet voice, “You should thank God that you are a human, my dear! You live in a comfortable house and you are intelligent. What if you were a beautiful bird, but caged? What if you were a beautiful bird that flew freely in the sky and you find a big bird chasing you?”

Then she suddenly grinned. “Time to go to the park, mister!” she said.

I laughed. My brother came running towards me and shouted, “Take me with you, please!”

I picked up my brother and kissed him. Soon we were making our way towards the park.

Published in Dawn, Young World June 10th, 2017