I am a ten rupee note. Some people think that I am useful and some think I am useless. Some people take care of me and some don’t. Some people collect me and some people spend me.

My story begins from the moment the State Bank of Pakistan took me and printed me as a ten rupee note. I have two pictures of Quaid-i-Azam, one picture can be seen easily but the other can only be seen when you put the note in front of a light source. I have ‘ten’ written in two languages, English and Urdu. They gave me to a man who came to the bank to draw some money. The man was not rich at all, but he was clean.

On the way home he went to a shop and gave me to the shopkeeper and bought a banana. The shopkeeper took me and crumpled me up. My new, crispy good look was gone forever. The shopkeeper was disgusting and touched me with his paan stained fingers. I was so miserable that I just wanted to die, I didn’t have any choice but to live. I felt like crying but I cannot express my feelings or cry.

A crippled man came and started begging so the shopkeeper gave me to the beggar. The man thanked the shopkeeper and kept me in his shalwar pocket. The man was very stinky and his clothes were black because he used to beg near a coalmine. I thought, “What could be worse?” I was smelly, crumpled and splattered with spit and paan.

The beggar dropped me by mistake when he was taking his cigarette out. He was standing beside the seashore, so I was dropped on the sand which made me wet. The waves took me into the sea and slowly I became cleaner. While I was floating in the sea I saw boats and fishes. Then a boy, who was fishing on a cruise ship which was passing by, caught me in a net along with some fishes. When he pulled the net, the boy took me out.

The boy was from Korea who liked to collect foreign currency. When he went home he washed me, so I was clean from the salt and I didn’t smell of fish and the beggar. The boy even ironed me and I was as good as new. He put me in his money collection album and I had new friends of other countries. I lived happily ever after.