What does "Write an essay" mean.

What does "Write an essay" mean..? Can anybody answer that..? I was asked the same question many times during my examinations. I felt it as writing a long note about the things that we know about the topic that has been asked. I think many people has the similar kind of misapprehension about writing an essay. But I know a person who has defined "Writing an essay" in a different manner.

I appeared to many exams in hindi literature. Those exams were conducted by Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha. There were a total of 8 levels in the exam which one has to pass, so that they can be certified as Hindi Pandits. I passed four of them, but didn't give them a thought there after.

When I was appearing for the first level of the exam, I had a friend, who was also appearing for the exam. That guy didn't knew anything about the exam. He applied for that at the last minute and appeared for the exam directly. He wasn't prepared to take the exam. The main reason for his appearance for the exam was to improve his Hindi skills, as he was poor in that. From the time we got to know that he was appearing for the exams, we were thinking of the guy who is going to correct his paper.

There was the question of writing an essay about any of the listed topics in the question paper. We were astonished as he was taking more and more additional answer sheets to answer the questions. We were very eager to know what he was writing. To our surprise, he was the one who has taken the most additional answer sheets among all the people who has written the exam. After finishing the exam, we all gathered near him and asked him, what topic made him write the most number of answer sheets. The reasons and the descriptions that he has given were the most humorous ones that I have ever heard.

As there were many topics listed in the essay writing section, my friend choose to write about Cinema. Instead of writing about topics like cinema's impact, its pros and cons, its effects on the society etc etc... he started writing a cinema story. That too in Telugu language in a Hindi examination. He described the whole of the cinema story in Telugu, together with the songs and dialogs. He wrote the whole of the film story and that made him take the maximum number of additional sheets. We all praised him for his sincerity in writing the exam and also encouraged in to become a film writer in the future.