Autobiography of Pencil

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE STUB OF A PENCIL

          My story is a story of service and self-sacrifice. I have always lived for the sake of others and allowed my body to be worn out in service of others. I am a dwarf today but once I had a tall and graceful figure. My parents lived in a forest. They were cruelly uprooted from their native soil and were brought in a factory. Here, they suffered untold hardships and and died as I was born. I had a number of companions each one like myself. We were given shiny gay coats of green, blue and red and were decorated with gold and silver stars. We were packed in boxes-a dozen of us tied together in a bundle and a dozen of such bundles in a box. I was packed with 143 companions in a miserable little box.

          When I opened my eyes I found myself fin a glass show-case in the window of a big stationery shop of Karachi. I was the first to be sold. My master kept me in a drawer of his writing table. Then one day, his daughter came and picked me up saying to her father, “My pencil is lost and I am carrying yours to school”. I became the servant of my young mistress. I began to enjoy life, now, as I could see a lot of the world around me. I used to go to school with my mistress and help her in her studies. She used me very gently and used the horrible sharpener very rarely. In fact, she took very little work from me. My duty was only to mark important passages in her text-book. However, my happy-go-lucky life came to an abrupt end. The young lady dropped me. while getting down from a bus. O me! I thought I was going to be crushed under the wheels of the bus-but no, I was fortunate; I had fallen inside the bus. I was picked up by the conductor.

          The conductor used me for noting down the number of ticket she had sold at each stop. I lost health rapidly and soon became small. One day, I slipped down from the pocket of my master and fell on the road. I am lying here helplessly and do not know what the future holds for me.