Tania's Discovery
Tania was helping mama with her gardening. Mama wanted to grow some tomatoes. She had already got the seeds and the pot. But she needed some mud. Tania offered to get her the mud. The housing society had a small little garden.
Mama had talked to the society gardener, and he had told her that she could get some mud from the muddy patch near the swing. Tania went there with her bucket and spade in the evening to get some mud
for mama. She met Tanisha on her way and Tanisha offered to help her. Tania and Tanisha settled down with the bucket and spade near the muddy patch but the mud was too hard and dry.
There was very little loose mud. They managed to scoop a couple of spades full but that would not be enough. They wondered what to do. Tania noticed a tap at the corner of the garden. That is
where the gardener would connect the hose to water the garden.
Tania and Tanisha walked over to the tap and filled their bucket with water. Then they brought the water back to the muddy patch and wet it thoroughly to make the mud soft. But they realised they had nothing to dig with. Tania had only brought her spade and no fork, because she had expected the mud to be loose.
Tanisha suggested they look for some sticks in the clump of trees behind the swing.
The 2 girls found a couple of nice sturdy sticks. Rather pleased with themselves, they made their way back to the wet muddy patch. Tania and Tanisha started digging busily. As they dug away they chatted, gossiped and joked about this and that. Soon they had dug up a
big pile of mud.
Tania and Tanisha looked at the mud pile and decided they had enough to fill the bucket. They were just about to stop digging and even up the hole when Tania noticed something odd. The bottom of the hole was shinning red. Tania touched it and it felt smooth like plastic. Tanisha and Tania got curious and dug some more. What could be there? With their curiosity aroused Tania and Tanisha dug efficiently and cleared away the mud rapidly, to reveal a red plastic box.
The box was a little stuck but Tania and Tanisha managed to pull it out together sweating and panting. They were amazed at what they had found and could not wait to open it. On the count of three they flipped open the cover together and
pulled out the contents. What a weird collection of things they found!
There were a couple of photos of some children, some candy, an audio CD of songs, a list of book titles and finally a list of 4 names with a profession noted next to each name.
Tania and Tanisha carefully examined the contents. They also found a small chit of paper with 18th May 2009 printed on it. Tanisha was examining a paper and the photos. She suddenly exclaimed, "Trisha is my older sister! That is her
name there on the paper. And this is a picture from when she was about 4 years old in 2009! I wonder what this is all about."
"We could ask her", said Tania. They rushed over with the box to Tanisha's house. Trisha was surprised to see Tania and Tanisha so excited and she was even more surprised to see what they were holding. She recognised the red plastic box immediately, though it had been years since she had thought of it.
Tania and Tanisha were bubbling with questions and Trisha tried to answer them all. She said "The box is a time capsule. The four of us were best friends. We still are. We decided to document things that were important to us then, like our favourite candy, songs, books and what we wanted to be when we grew up. Then in 10 years we would check it out to see how much we had changed. It was buried in a box
under the swing. We were supposed to open it on 18th May 2019." She smiled nostalgically.
"Oh! I am sorry" said Tania. "We can bury it back."
"No, no. Don't worry about that. Why don't you make a time capsule of your own instead and bury it in the same spot. My friends and I can take a look at this now. It will be fun. Then you can see if some nosy kids go dig up your time capsule before you intended for it to be dug up." She winked at them and smiled.
Tania and Tanisha returned to the garden. They picked up the bucket of mud to give Tania's mother. On the way up they excitedly discussed what they could put in their own time capsule.
