Chapter 22: chapter 22

The Boy Who Saved the Moon from DrowningThere once lived a boy called Chandru in a small hamlet in Uttarakhand. Chandru was a sweet boy, too simple for his own good. Because of this, he was often bullied by his classmates and friends. His mother constantly worried about him. Her son helped her with all her housework: cooking, cleaning, going to the nearby well to fetch water, and washing clothes. But she did not know how to make her boy more streetwise and clever enough to deal with his bullies.In his free time, Chandru liked to be by himself, reading something or spending time in the woods, talking and singing to himself. It was better than spending time with other kids, who either made him slog to look for the ball when someone had kicked it too far or just kept him out of the game entirely.One late evening, the clean water in the house tank ran out suddenly before dinner was cooked. Chandru’s mother realised they would need a refill. So she asked Chandru to quickly get a pail of water from the well. ‘And be careful. The village well is very deep. Don’t bend too much over it, else you will fall inside it. Then it will be very difficult to pull you out at this time of the evening,’ she warned.Chandru went readily, a pail in his hand. When he bent to put the pail into the well, he saw the reflection of the moon gleaming in the water. He immediately thought that the moon had fallen from the sky into the well. He stared at the moon for a while and thought, ‘The moon must have fallen into the well just like Amma warned me could happen. It won’t be able to come out by itself. I must rescue the moon.’Chandru thought he would drop the pail into the water and easily fish out the moon. But every time he pulled it back up, it would only have water in it. The moon remained in the well. Chandru thought it was because his aim was bad. The water kept rippling and shaking, after all.So he carefully waited till the water stilled and then threw the pail into the well again. This time, the pail snagged on a large rock. Chandru pulled and pulled but the pail wouldn’t come up.‘It must be because the moon is so heavy. That’s why it’s so difficult to pull it out of the water,’ Chandru thought as he struggled to pull the pail out.He pulled one last time with all his might. Suddenly, the rock gave way and the pail was unstuck. But because Chandru was pulling so hard, the pail rebounded, pulling its rope right out of Chandru’s hands, to fly out of the well and onto the roof of a nearby shed. Chandru was himself thrown on his back with the impact.He looked up in a daze and spotted the moon in the sky. He assumed that the pail must have thrown the moon up into the sky. He had finally been able to rescue the moon from drowning!He quickly filled his pail and ran home to tell his mother how he had saved the moon. Feeling smart and strong enough to have saved the moon, Chandru soon began to think, ‘Why should someone who saved the mighty moon be scared of bullies at school? If I can protect the moon, I can definitely protect myself!’That confidence made Chandru face his bullies and stand them down. He even went on to make new friends, kinder ones who let him play with them. All because he had once bravely saved the moon.