This is the story of two best friends, Sara and Hira — both had different approaches to studies. Sara took studies seriously while Hira never considered studies important.

It was Monday morning and the start of their term assessments. As usual, Sara got up early, freshened up and changed into her school uniform. After breakfast, she left for school.

Sara was confident about her preparation as she had studied the whole weekend, but a bit nervous like everyone during the exam time.

On the other hand, Hira wasn’t prepared for her exams and was careless as ever. She had spent the whole weekend with her family at the beach. She really had fun and so she was excited to tell this to her friends.

That day also, Hira got up late and therefore did everything in a hurry. She rushed to school to get a seat beside Sara or any other brilliant student of the class so that she could request them to show her the answer sheet. Luckily, she found an empty chair beside Sara in the examination room.

She passed a smile to Sara and whispered if she could show her answer sheet. To her shock, Sara refused at once. Hira was dumbstruck because she hadn’t expected that.

When the exam started, Hira tried to peek into Sara’s paper while Sara kept hiding her answers. But it was impossible for her to hide while still writing. Thus forgetting her peeping friend, she completed her paper and left the classroom.

Hira had cheated almost all the answers from Sara’s paper and was expecting good grades. Sara didn’t like Hira’s attitude and was cross with her. She didn’t speak to her after that.

After one week, the result was announced and the copies were handed back to the students. Sara had attained the highest percentage in the class while Hira had failed.

Hira was shocked and thought how this could happen when she had copied from Sara’s answer sheet. Hira went to Sara and apologised for what she did the other day and asked Sara if she could look in her copy and tell what she did wrong that got her such poor marks.

It was geography paper. Sara looked into it and found that Hira had written everything wrong. Like instead of ‘water pollution reduces the supply of freshwater’ she had written, ‘Water purification reduces the supply of dirty water’; similarly, other answers were wrong too. As Hira didn’t study before, she had no clue of what she was cheating from Sara and what she was writing as she couldn’t see all the answers.

Sara felt bad for Hira so she told her to end this careless attitude and instead take studies serious. Hira was ashamed of cheating and losing her best friend, so she promised never to cheat again and study well from that day onwards.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 17th, 2018