When the principal of a modest suburban primary school announced to her students a flower-planting contest to be held among them and to be judged by an elite panel of judges, she was certain of producing future horticulturists and agriculturists as well as competitive and excellence-driven individuals in general. But there was another certainty: she did not factor in the drama that such a contest will create among the young contestants who collided in a heady mix of love, friendship and cooperation, envy, jealousy and hate; drama so intense that, at times, it verged on the very deadly.