The last ray of hope I Story By Sai Sahasra, 11, Bangalore

Title : The last ray of hope

One lovely, sunny morning, a cat brought her kittens for their first walk in a very long time. They had never seen the beautiful sun before. The youngest kitten started trying to catch the sun rays and wandered a few feet away from her mother. Looking around, she felt scared and alone. When her mother meowed at her to come back, she jumped into her mother’s warm, furry embrace. But she still gazed, spellbound, at the golden ball in the sky, wishing she could play with it. The older kittens too loved the sun. But the youngest one still stood out. 

The mother started pushing her children back into the house, where the cat’s owner greeted them with a bowl of food. All the kittens pounced on it, but the youngest one still stared at the lovely sun. Only when her mother dragged her to the food bowl did she start to eat.

As time passed the kitten grew into a fine cat and gave birth to kittens herself. She too showed them the sun and, like her, they too were charmed by the sun. They passed on the tale to their young ones who passed it on to their young ones and so on. 

The years had flown by and as the number of the cat’s descendants increased, so did the pollution. The tale continued till the cat’s great, great, great grandchildren passed it onto their children. Now, the youngest kitten in the family asked her mother, “But mother, why have I never seen the Sun?”. 

Her mother told her, “It is because the great black clouds have covered him up”.

“But mother, how could you see the sun?”

The cat’s grandmother chimed in at this point. She said, “The humans have made the air dirty. The dirt comes together and makes big clouds that cover up the sun. When I was little, there was less dirt. But now, the humans have dirtied up the air so much and so fast that the world is covered with dirt clouds.”

The cat didn’t know how big the earth was – she thought that it only consisted of what was around her – and she surely didn’t know that not every single part of the earth was polluted. They all sat in silence, thinking. At last, the grandmother sighed, “Ah! It was paradise then! But now, it’s a paradise lost.”

— Story by Sai Sahasra Ongolu

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