During one of our class morning meetings, my class teacher Ms. Liju Ma’am mentioned an update that was posted by our coordinator on the Homeroom page. She mentioned it was about an Olympiad exam on Astronomy. The word Astronomy immediately rang a bell in my head. I loved reading books on outer space and other planets, so I was immediately captivated by this. After the Morning Meeting, I checked the update in the Homeroom Page and came across the “National Astronomy Challenge”. I immediately rushed to my parents to take their consent to enroll myself in this program. They were more than happy and readily agreed to it.
NAC conducts monthly engagement sessions by experts for us students. These programs are designed to nurture our interest in astronomy and space. These programs were really very informative and used to keep me engrossed to what they were speaking. I can’t deny though that sometimes I do drift off to space imagining myself in a spacesuit and exploring the moon and other planets. They explained about different constellations and also taught us how to use certain software like Stellarium to watch and observe our night sky better. Then in the month of October, they conducted a program named Moon Over Us. There were three challenges. The first sounded quite simple. We had to click a picture of the moon, or we could also take any interesting pic from the internet and submit it. I was more than happy with this simple task. One evening I borrowed my mother’s mobile to take a pic of the moon and set out happily. To my horror and dismay, the sky in Bangalore was overcast and I couldn’t spot the moon. I returned back dejected, and I hoped to find the moon in any of the consequent days. As my luck would have it, I couldn’t spot the moon on any of the days. Soon it was the last day to submit when I remembered clicking a pic of the moon from my native a few months back. So I quickly retrieved the old pic and submitted it.
Then they announced the second challenge. This one was a national-level painting competition and was even more interesting. They wanted us to show how it would be if we humans settled on the moon and had our colony there. Now, this is something that I often daydream about after reading my space books. I decided to exactly capture my dream of me relaxing on the moon watching the Earth rising. But I wasn’t very sure how I could go about it. When I discussed my idea with my mother, who also paints, said the idea was perfect and gave me guidance on how to go about it. So finally, one evening I sat with my canvas and some paints borrowed from my mother and started with my painting. The entire period I painted I really envisioned myself sitting on a chair and relaxing on the moon and slowly my painting came to life. I was thrilled at the outcome and went running to show my parents. My parents themselves were surprised and my mother beamed with joy seeing a successor in the family who finally had some artistic skill. Thoroughly happy with the end result I clicked the picture, prayed to God, and submitted my entry for the competition. They said the results will be announced on Nov 15th and I waited endlessly looking at the calendar every morning. Finally, it was Nov 15th morning and I kept checking if they announced the result. But they did not, and it so happened that they did not announce that entire day. I was dejected but started growing impatient to know the result. Then on Nov 17th, my mother received a message from them saying they would announce the result on Nov 18th during one of their live sessions. Finally eager to know the results I joined the session on Nov 18th. They began the session congratulating and appreciating the kids for participating and finally they announced the result. I gave out a loud scream of joy when I saw my name along with my school’s name on the screen with my painting. They announced that I won the second prize for the Grade 4-5 category at the National level. My joy knew no bounds and I immediately dropped a mail to my class teacher informing her of the same. She too shared my joy and congratulated me.
I would like to thank my school, coordinators, and my class teacher for guiding us to such amazing programs and hence giving us opportunities to explore our talents and at the same time gain knowledge in the field of our interest. I will continue to represent my school in many such competitions and bring laurels to our school.
