Highly Commended Story - The Drawing Competition

“The Drawing Competition” by Tvisha Nair, The international school of Bangalore, India, is the Highly Commended story in the junior category of the second biannual Short Story Contest 2020.

Tvisha Nair is a 6th grade student of The International School Bangalore. She lives with her parents in Bangalore. Her hobbies are dancing, drama, singing, drawing and baking. She has been learning the Kathak dance form and Hindustani classical music. She loves to read books and her favourite books are the Harry Potter series. She also enjoys writing short stories. Tvisha is a cheerful and curious young girl who loves to ask questions in her class.

The Drawing Competition

The medals don’t mean anything and the glory doesn’t last, it’s all about your happiness, the rewards are going to come but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing.
- Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Today I am going to share my experience that is related to the quote that I just read. It all started when the drawing competition was taking place, I really wanted to win it and get the trophy of the best artist, so I started working really hard on my weak points in drawing and I started to plan on how could I win the trophy, I spent so many hours working on it, that the time flew really fast and I didn't even notice that finally the day came by. I was so excited but nervous at the same time, I just hoped my plans worked to make me good enough to win the trophy and the competition.

I went to the hall where we had to draw in and I saw my best friend so I waved to her and she waved back, when the drawing competition started I drew what I needed to draw in the given time and the funny thing was I didn't even face any problems, everything had gone in place and I was feeling very confident that I would finally get the trophy of the best artist. Then came the day when they called out the winner, I was so confident to get the prize I didn't even bother to hear who was getting it because I knew I would be the one to get it, then I heard my friend's name being called and this shocked me so much, how could she get it and not me, I congratulated her and went home making sure nobody saw how sad I was, I was happy for my friend but I was very disappointed at the same time, so I did something that I usually do when I am sad or disappointed – read a book so the first book I saw was the book of moral stories so I started to read it and I came across a story in which there was a wise person who wanted to become the wisest person in the world so he asked the guru "how much time will it take to become the wisest person in the world", the guru said " 5 years", the person then said " what if I work day and night" , the guru said "10 years", then the guru ended by saying "if you have one eye on the work and one eye on the reward you will never succeed".

After reading this story I finally understood why I didn't win the competition, it was because I was focusing only on the reward and not enjoying the process, so this year I again participated in the competition and this time I focused more on the painting than focusing on winning or not and I also enjoyed the drawing competition and not like last time where I was worried that did I follow every step of my plan to win. To my surprise I won the trophy. So, from this experience I learnt if you put 100% effort, it will always give you fruitful results.