The Brahmin's Dream

A poor brahmin lived alone in a small bare room, and one day he was given a fine full pot of rice-flour as thanks for his prayers. He was delighted. He hung the pot on a peg in the wall, right above the foot of his bed, where he could keep a happy eye on it. And that night, lying back with his head on his hands, he gazed up at his lovely pot of flour and began, contentedly, to dream.

“When food grows dear in the market,” he thought, “I shall sell that flour for a good handful of coins. And with those coins I shall buy a pair of fine goats. The goats will have kids, and soon I shall have a whole herd. I shall sell the herd and buy cows. The cows will give sweet milk, and I shall sell the milk and grow rich.”

He smiled up at the ceiling, warming to it now.

“And once I am rich, why, I shall buy a fine big house. And a man as wealthy as I shall be will surely find himself a beautiful wife. And we shall have a son, a fine clever boy, the cleverest in the whole town.”

His eyes were shining in the dark.

“And when my son is naughty,” he went on, “when he runs about and will not sit still and will not do as he is told, then I shall be very stern with him. I shall pick up a stick, like this, and I shall shake it at him, like THIS, and tell him to behave himself at once!”

And carried clean away by his wonderful dream, the brahmin snatched up an imaginary stick and swung his arm grandly through the air.

Crack. His hand struck the pot hanging above his bed. Down it came, and burst, and emptied itself all over him.

And there sat the poor brahmin, up in his bed, white from head to foot with rice-flour, his goats and his cows and his fine house and his clever scolded son all spilled out in a sad pale heap across the floor.