Maria was enjoying the cool and sweet taste of the icelolly that she had just bought from the vendor who was ever present at the school gate at the end of each school day. She was sitting in the van, waiting for it to start after all the children had settled into it.

“Hummmm, this is really nice. Just what we need to beat the heat,” said Hina, Maria’s classmate and best friend for whom Maria had also bought an icelolly. The two girls were in the same class and lived nearby too, so they commuted in the same school van. Sharing things came naturally to them which was why they often shared lunches and stationary items.

“It is really sweet of your mom to give you 40 rupees today to buy these lollies! But you know what? My mother always tells me that eating golaganda from these street vendors is not good because you never know what kind of water they use for making the ice. I guess she is going to be angry when she finds out that I’ve had it,” Hina added.

“Well, don’t tell her about it and you will not be scolded!” Maria quickly assured her friend.

“Okay!” Hina answered hurriedly as she was licking the dripping syrup of the lolly, trying her best not to let stain her white uniform. Soon she had sucked all the syrup from the ice and just a bit of clear ice remained which was now almost tasteless so she threw it out of the van’s window.

Wiping her hands on the back of the seat in front of her, she turned to Maria and said, “You know something, mothers have this sixth sense that always tells them what we have been up to, no matter how hard we try and hide it. At least my mother always knows so I have realised that it is best to tell her myself than be caught hiding something from her and getting a bad scolding. Moreover, I really can’t rest well till I have told my mom everything… it just makes me feel more relaxed because the tension of mom finding out something what I have hidden from her is really a torture.”

Maria laughed out loud and made fun of her friend, “Come on! This is just a little harmless thing. Hey, we are 13 years old, surely we can have an icelolly without having to seek permission from our parents! We are not committing a crime.”

Hina thought her friend did make sense and agreed to not let this little incident bother her. When Maria reached home, she happily greeted her mother and started playing with her younger brother. Her mother called out to her to wash up and change so that they could have lunch. As Maria passed her mother on the way to her bedroom, her mother noticed the red and green stains of the juicy syrup of the icelolly.

“What is this Maria? Look how you have stained your uniform!”

Maria quickly looked down at her dress and was unnerved for a few seconds seeing the stains but quickly recovered and lied, ”Oh I am so sorry mom! What could I do? We are painting a really large mural for our annual function and somehow a few spots ended up on my uniform.”

She quickly escaped into her room before her mother asked any more questions. Luckily, nothing more was said about it and Maria felt she had gotten away. Maria had another reason to fear her mother finding out about the icelolly episode — her mom had not given her the money to buy the icelollies! Maria had quietly taken it from her mom’s purse like she had done on several other occasions when she wanted to take some money to school. Maria’s parents allowed her to take money to school only once a week and that too not more than 20 rupees. They had explained to her that homemade lunches were better than the stuff in the school canteen and if she wanted to have things like juices and chips, they would buy it for her and she can take it to school rather than take money to school to buy them there. But Maria envied others in her class who brought money to school almost everyday and sometimes as much as a hundred rupees. Moreover, what can you really get these days in 20 rupees? Her parents were just being old-fashioned, she thought, and found an easy way to have things her way while her parents thought they were getting her to do things their way.

The next morning she was running very high fever and her throat was hurting so bad that she could hardly swallow. When she didn’t come out of her room dressed for school at the usual time, her mother came to wake her up.

“Get up love, you will be late for school!” her mom spoke sweetly and sat beside her to give her a hug but quickly pulled back in shock when she felt Maria’s body burning with fever. “Goodness! You have such high fever, are you having pain somewhere? Why didn’t you wake me up?” she enquired anxciously.

Maria could hardy utter a sound and quietly took the medicine her mother gave for to bring down the fever. She told Maria’s father about this and he called up his office to cancel a meeting that morning so that he could take Maria to a doctor.

“She has a bad throat, I need to give her antibiotics and I guess she can’t go to school for a few days,” he explained as Maria sat with her head almost in her mother’s lap. Her parents were very worried and fussed over her a lot that day. Along with the discomfort Maria was feeling due to her illness, she was also filled with pangs of guilt and remorse for having taken (she could not bring herself to even think of the word ‘stealing’) money to school and buying the icelolly that seemed to have hurt her throat.

In the evening when Maria got up after a nap, her fever has come down a bit and her mother came with a bowl of her favourite soup. As her mother tried to cox her into having the soup and started to feed her lovingly, Maria burst into sobs. She could not hold back her guilt anymore — she hugged her mother and, in between her sobs, told her everything. She begged her mom for forgiveness and promised never to hide anything from her. Understandably, her mother was shocked and hurt to hear that Maria had sometimes taking money without permission and spent it in school. She told Maria that this was not something she expected from a child she loved so much but hoped that she had learnt a lesson that she would never forget.