The Riddle of the Four Lunch Tokens

Once every month, the school canteen opened a special snack counter for the middle grades.

That meant one exciting thing for Grade 3: lunch tokens.

The tokens were small laminated cards in bright colors, each with a different shape in the middle.

There was a yellow star, a red square, a blue circle, and a green triangle.

Children liked the snacks, of course.

But they also liked the tokens.

They looked like tiny puzzle pieces from a game no one had quite finished yet.

Just before the lunch bell, the class monitor placed four tokens on the teacher's table and called out the names of the children who had earned canteen turns for helping during assembly practice: Asha, Dev, Farhan, and Kabir.

Everyone noticed the tokens because they were impossible to miss.

Asha held up the yellow star and said, 'This one looks like it belongs on a festival lantern.'

Dev tucked the blue circle token into the little transparent pocket of his pencil pouch so it would not fall.

Farhan dropped the red square token once, and when he picked it up, he laughed because one corner had a tiny ink smudge from the classroom floor.

Kabir spun the last token between his fingers without saying much, then tucked it into his notebook and ran to wash his hands.

When the bell rang, the line moved quickly toward the canteen corridor.

That was when Meera, who was behind them, saw something lying near the handwash area.

It was a lunch token.

She picked it up at once.

Green triangle.

'Whose is this?' asked Meera.

The corridor was noisy. Steel tiffins clicked. Water taps splashed. Someone from another class was calling for chutney.

No one heard her the first time.

So Meera stepped aside and thought carefully instead.

Asha's token could not be green because Asha had the yellow star.

Dev's could not be green because he had put the blue circle token in his pencil pouch.

Farhan's was definitely red because of the little ink mark on one corner.

That left only one child.

Kabir.

Meera hurried forward and found him halfway down the line, patting his notebook and looking more worried with each second.

'Are you missing this?' she asked.

Kabir turned at once.

His face changed so quickly that Meera almost laughed.

'Yes!' he said. 'I thought it slipped out somewhere.'

He took the green triangle token with both hands as if it were far more valuable than a snack card.

'How did you know it was mine?'

Meera smiled. 'It was not magic. It was only the clues.'

At lunch, Kabir told the whole story twice, once with big arm movements and once more with careful details, because he liked the second version better.

By the end of the day, half the class had started calling the lost token episode a riddle.

Meera did not mind.

She liked the idea that logic did not always belong only in workbooks.

Sometimes it appeared near a noisy handwash sink, holding still until someone noticed the clues and put them together in the right order.