Once, I met a young boy. He loved the colour blue. I often saw him dress in his favourite colour. When asked, he said it reminds him of the skies and the ocean. Both unending, and both reminding him of things that were hidden in the world.
If you could have a superpower, what would you like it to be? I asked.
I would love to fly across the blue skies and dive deep into the oceans, he said.
This boy was different. He talked to strangers and never told his parents about it. Kids like him were not allowed to talk to strangers, but he couldn’t help it. He often talked to the stars in the night sky and the trees. He had so much to say, and so much to ask.
He never asked the stars questions. He only told them his precious secrets.
Like the other day, he spoke about the bird that visits him every morning. It comes and sits down by his window. Seems like the bird needs a friend. It also sings to him. He told the stars that he didn’t like its song, but it wouldn’t stop singing. He swore that they would also not like its song.
But the stars never replied. His mother had once told him that the stars were very far from us. Maybe that’s why they don’t answer…
That’s enough about the boy. This story is about his other obsession with something in the sky. Something that the poets seem to love. The moon.
He often saw the moon in the sky and wanted to have a piece of it. He was sure that it was made of cake. Another thing to know about the boy: he loved cake.
It was his absolute favourite thing in the whole world. He was so fond of cake that everything that seemed good to him, he often thought that it was made of cake. Apart from people, of course.
He loved the moon dearly and to him, it was surely made of cake. The cake he wanted to eat.
One day, he saw the moon in the sky, and it was full and appeared to be so big. He also heard the wolves howling. They sounded hungry. They too wanted to eat the cake, he thought.
Also read: Astronauts and Rasgullas: Using the Mind’s Eye in a Pandemic
“The moon isn’t made of cake, you silly boy. It’s made of cheese,” he was told one day.
“Well that isn’t possible, wouldn’t it have melted by now?”
Dismissing the beliefs of everyone who told him otherwise, he continued to believe that the moon was made out of cake.
“Who made this cake then?” someone asked him once.
“Well, there must be people out there who wanted to bake a cake for us. And the sun is so hot that cooking the cake must have been very easy.”
“Who put the icing?” he was asked another day.
“Maybe the people who lived on the moon… I guess they wanted to decorate it… sometimes they eat their own home you know. That’s why the moon appears like its been bitten on some days.. I think they are nice people… because they like cake.”
“Who are these people? Don’t you think the scientists would have known about them till now?”
“Well no… scientists can be scary at times, and maybe they don’t know that they need beautiful cakes to be able to meet the people on the moon. I bet that if they baked more cakes and took them to the terrace at night, the moon people would come out. They can see us from the moon, and they can’t resist cakes.”
“Did I tell you that I am learning to bake cakes now? I am also learning to decorate them. I’m sure that the people on the moon want our cakes to be more beautiful. Decorating a cake is very important, you know, it makes you want to eat it. One day, very soon, I’ll bake a beautiful cake, one that they would want to come and eat. And maybe after that, I can take a bite of the moon…”
Shraddha Gulati is a physics graduate and freelance writer, who cannot seem to stop being amazed by the beauty all around us.
Featured image credit: Pixabay