Grade 7, Yeoville Community School
The house went silent as they all heard police sirens outside their house. Everyone hid as the sound of footsteps kept on getting louder and louder and louder. Suddenly they all heard a loud pounding on their door.
Mama Tanya stood up and opened the door; she stood there in shock as she saw the two policemen who were standing on her door step. One of the policemen said, “Who in this house is using or has a book? You know that we don’t allow books in this town.” The other one added in a stern voice, “Must I remind you what happens to a person who reads books?”
Mama Tanya said that there were no books in her house because she always checked in every corner of the house if someone hid anything. The police apologised and said it was a misunderstanding. They said that they came to their house to make sure if what people said about one of Mama Tanya’s children having a book was true or not. The police were still suspicious, but they left. Mama Tanya knew the police men would come again, so she decided that she would question her two daughters, Tanya and Jesica.
As Mama Tanya questioned both her children, they shivered like they knew something and were hiding a secret from their mother.
Every one knew that Jesica was a snitch and could not keep a secret, so she told her mom that Tanya had been keeping books under her bedroom tiles; she had also started a secret group at the woods where they read books without anyone knowing they were there. Tanya got the beating of her life; by then there was no children’s rights, and beating a child was like discipline.
Without another word Mama Tanya went to Tanya’s room where she found all these books she kept, and she burnt every single bit of the books. She thought that Tanya would stop reading, but she was wrong. Tanya was a quick thinker and decided to change their meeting place, and she encouraged her fellow members to start writing their own stories so they could read each other’s stories.
The more they grew, the more they improved their story writing. Tanya started preaching to her members about how they could change the world by writing these stories no matter how long or short they were. “Change people’s perspective of girls becoming housewives; we are more than that, we can change people’s perspective of ‘poor people can not go far’. We can change all of these by writing.”
Tanya’s little speech changed the whole world. They started going around the village preaching but some refused to join them.
Their last stop was the police station. They all stood outside the police station shouting, “We want proper education! We want proper education!” Soon the police came out and stood there angrily. Tanya got up and raised her voice and said, “This is why some villages are suffering with poverty, it is because you people pull yourselves down because of the shortage of money. Yes! We don’t have money but let’s try to start with something small like writing stories; this will improve more.”
With this inspiring speech, the police agreed on what she said, and they enforced a new rule which said, “Books to read anytime, anywhere.” This came with a quote, “Education is the key to success.”