Bhanu was a clever boy with one bad habit. Whatever anyone asked him to do, he always said the same word.
“Bhanu, finish your homework.”
“Later.”
“Bhanu, tidy your room.”
“Later.”
“Bhanu, practise your veena.”
“Laaaater.”
His mother sighed. His teacher frowned. And his homework piled up like a mountain.
The Clock Shop
One evening, Bhanu’s grandfather sent him to collect the old family clock from the repair shop at the end of the lane. The shop was narrow and dusty, filled with ticking clocks of every size: tall wooden ones, small brass ones, and one enormous clock with a golden sun on its face.
Behind the counter sat an old clockmaker with round spectacles.
“Ah, you’ve come for your grandfather’s clock,” he said. “It will be ready in a minute.”
“Only a minute? I can wait later,” Bhanu joked.
The clockmaker raised an eyebrow. “Do you know how much a minute is worth, young man?”
Bhanu shrugged. “Not much. It’s just sixty seconds.”
What a Minute Can Do
The clockmaker smiled and pointed to a tiny hourglass on the table. “Turn it over.”
Bhanu did. The sand began to trickle.
“In one minute,” said the clockmaker, “a hummingbird beats its wings thousands of times. Your heart beats about eighty times. A seed can crack open in the soil. Someone can say sorry, or thank you, or I love you, and change another person’s whole day.”
Bhanu watched the sand fall.
“In one minute, you could read a page of your book. Solve two maths problems. Put your shoes away. Learn a new word.”
The last grain dropped. “And now,” said the clockmaker quietly, “that minute is gone forever. No clock in this shop can bring it back.”
The Mountain of Later
Bhanu thought about his mountain of homework, his untidy room, and his dusty veena.
“But there’s so much to do,” he said. “It feels too big to start.”
The clockmaker opened the back of the old clock. Inside were dozens of tiny gears.
“Look,” he said. “Does the big hand move by itself? No. Each little gear turns just a tiny bit, and together they move the hands around the whole clock. Big things are made of small minutes.”
The One-Minute Rule
That night, Bhanu tried an experiment. He set a timer for just five minutes and did his homework. When the timer rang, he was surprised to find he wanted to keep going.
The next day, he tidied one shelf of his room. The day after, he practised the veena for ten minutes. Each small step turned like a little gear.
By the end of the month, the mountain of later had disappeared. His teacher smiled. His mother stopped sighing. And one evening, his grandfather heard sweet music from Bhanu’s room.
Back at the Shop
A few weeks later, Bhanu returned to the clock shop with a gift, a drawing of the clockmaker surrounded by gears.
“I made this in the time I used to waste saying later,” Bhanu said.
The clockmaker laughed and hung it on the wall, right beside the golden sun clock.
“Remember,” he said, “time is the only thing everyone gets exactly the same amount of. The difference is what we do with it.”
Moral of the Story
Time is precious and can never be returned. Small steps taken now are better than big plans for later. Don’t put off today what you can begin in just one minute.
Questions to Discuss
- Why did Bhanu always say “later”?
- What are some things you can do in just one minute?
- How did the clock gears help Bhanu understand big tasks?
- What is one thing you have been putting off that you could start today?
This story about time management is great for school-age children learning to handle homework, chores, and routines.
You May Also Enjoy
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- Why We Love Tenali Ramakrishna – The Cleverest Kid in History!
- The Vow of Bhishma
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