Translated from the Original Hindi by

Kanwar Dinesh Singh

“Uncle, Uncle! Give me two drops of life,” said a dirty, half-naked child, placing two rupees before the chemist.

“Two drops of life! Who misguided you, Son? There is no medicine in this name…mad boy!…Take your two rupees and go home. Get the correct name of the medicine,” the chemist answered with a smile, placing the two-rupee coin on the child’s palm.

“Uncle, this is the medicine that Amit Uncle (Amitabh Bachchan) asks us children to take. Don’t you watch TV? Even yesterday, on our own little TV, Amit Uncle was asking us to take this medicine,” the child said naively.

“Well, you are talking about polio drops. It was given for free yesterday. Where were you then?”

“Yesterday, it was Sunday, Uncle. It was a holiday. Mummy took me to work with her. Mummy works there. I stayed there all day. We returned home by sunset. Therefore, I did not get to take two drops of life. Now, if I don’t take these two drops, Amit Uncle will get annoyed with me. Last night, he himself was saying on TV that he would never talk to a child who would not take two drops of life!” The boy was about to cry.

*** Kanwar Dinesh Singh, Poet, Storyteller, Critic and Translator (English/Hindi)  kanwardineshsingh@gmail.com