“The Snail and Ma Pu Kywe” (Inspiration)
Ma Pu Kywe was a third grade student. One day the teacher said, “We are having a poetry
competition in the class tomorrow. The one who can recite a poem very fluently will receive a prize.”
Hearing that, Ma Pu Kywe was very excited. She had always wanted to win something in her life for
she was neither the smartest in her class nor excelled in sports. She also wanted the prize that her
teacher mentioned. When she got back home, she started learning the poem, without even changing
her school uniforms. Her mother at first thought of ordering her to take a bath but then she saw her
daughter’s enthusiasm in getting the poem by heart, so soon she gave up and left her alone.
When it was late evening, Ma Pu Kywe got about eight out of twelve lines of the poem.
Feeling relieved, she took a quick bath and had dinner abruptly and went back into her room to learn
the rest of the lines. She tried to recite the first eight lines that she already got but to her dismay, she
seemed to forget everything again. She had to start learning from the beginning. In the cold night
breeze, Ma Pu Kywe was sweating. She was walking to and fro in the room, trying to memorize the
poem all over again. Tears welled up in her eyes, thinking she would never make it the next morning.
She stopped walking and stood near the window, giving out a heavy sigh. Gazing into the distance,
what came into her view was a little snail, obviously trying to reach the top of the fence post. The little
snail kept slipping off the post, but it seemed that it wouldn’t give up easily, because she saw it
climbing up slowly again and again. Ma Pu Kywe was watching the snail with utmost interest, not
noticing that it was dark. When the snail got to the top, she stretched her back and went back to her
memorizing the poem. This time, she was learning the poem with a new vision that she had got from
the little snail.
The next day, the class was noisy with the excitement of who would win in the poem recitation
until the teacher came in. One by one, the students came out of the class and recited the poem. Most of
them didn’t do well; they couldn’t finish the poem. Some stuttered. Some stammered. No one did
recite the poem completely. When it was her turn, Ma Pu Kywe came out the class boldly and recited
the whole poem without any hitches. Everybody was impressed, including the teacher. When the
teacher handed her the prize, the applause was the loudest she had heard in her whole life.