Sheikhchilli’s mother sent him to buy milk worth one anna. Those were the days when an anna bought things what today ten rupees can buy. It was Sheikhchilli’s first visit to the halwai shop where milk, tea and sweets were sold. When he arrived, the halwai was preparing to serve hot milk to a customer.
He was cooling the boiling milk by pouring it from one metal pot into another by trying to stretch the milk stream as long as he could. The milk almost looked like a long white strip of cloth. Sheikhchilli watched fascinated.
After serving milk to the customer the halwai turned to Sheikhchilli to ask, “What do you want, boy?”
“I want milk.”
“How much?”
Sheikhchilli didn’t know the measurement of milk. Then he remembered the cloth strip like the stream of milk and said, “I want two yards of it.”
All the people present there burst out laughing.
The halwai took the anna coin and the pot from Shekhchilli and poured milk into it in two long streams from his milk pot saying, “Here you are, dear Sheikhchilli. This is two yards of milk!”
Sheikhchilli went away proudly as people burst into another round of laughing.
Moral : Innocence is good but foolishness is not.
