Three Laughing Children

Anup had got himself busy. He carried the bucket on his head. The man nearby thought that the kid was helping him to clean his shop but the kid was having fun. Anup had invented more than half a dozen interesting methods of carrying a bucket and more than a dozen funny ways to cover the twenty steps that it took to reach the shop from the water source. He ran carrying bucketfuls of water, laughing at jokes he saw within himself or without. Only he could see those funny faces that he spotted in the clouds above or in things around him.

Then his eyes fell on the toddy shop down below the road. He saw his father. He too was laughing. Everyone around him too were laughing. The kid looked at this scene wistfully.

Like the mother cow is conned into yielding milk by being presented with its stuffed up dead calf, the toddy seller brought out the phantom child in their customers and milked their purse strings.

Anup watched the scenes of laughter as well as their occasional brawls equally intrigued.

A hackney carriage appeared on the road. The Paramahamsa was in there. He too was laughing. As the carriage came near the toddy shop the man-child called out to the people there. It looked as if he wanted to dance with them. But some others held him.

Anup saw that smile. He ran behind the carriage.

‘Go back to your father’ the Paramahamsa said, ‘come afterwards’.

The smile lodged indelibly in Anup’s heart as the carriage disappeared into the horizon.

Does Anup’s way up lie a long way down?

Swami Sampurnananda,Genre 273,  
on Lalgarh bed, 22 Jan – 23 Jan 2003, 3.35 a.m.