An Innocent Answer

It is sunny morning of spring. In the garden, the trees that were bare few days ago are now covered with new enchanting green leaves. Wind is flowing from the east with a fragrance of wetted soil. Some children are running against the wind. Some are playing marbles on the smooth yellowish ground surrounded by shrubs and bushes.  Some are making Charakhi by cutting the mango leaves, and linking it to the cot, in a hope to make the cot fly like an aeroplane. Their warbling is mingling in the wind and making it alive, an animate being.  Some are staring at the earthy waterway flowing beside the tree from the tube-well to the dry fields and are putting the boats, made of leaves. Some are running, massaging and wrestling into the waterlogged fields.

“What are you doing here? Go and read! These things will not make you rich.” (An earnest middle aged voice swells in the ambiance.)

“What is to be rich, father!” (An innocent voice inquires).

“After becoming rich, you will be happy, my boy!”

“That means I will not have to read, once I become rich.”