Krishna and the Butter

In a village of cows and green fields, the butter was kept in clay pots that hung from the kitchen ceiling on ropes. They hung high, high up. That was because of Krishna.

Krishna was very small, but he had friends. They stood on each other's shoulders and made a wobbling, giggling tower, and up at the top went Krishna, reaching with both hands.

The pot came down. The butter went in. When Yashoda came in from the yard, she found her little boy sitting on the floor with white butter on his cheeks, his hands, his chin, and one small blue nose.

She knelt down beside him. "Krishna," she said, "did you eat the butter?" Krishna thought about it. He looked at the empty pot. He looked at his mother. "No," he said.

"Then open your mouth," said Yashoda, "and let me see." And Krishna opened his mouth wide, because he was four, and because he had not yet learned that mouths keep secrets badly. And there was the butter.

Yashoda began to laugh, and then Krishna began to laugh, and she pulled him into her lap, butter and all. "Next time," she said into his hair, "just tell me. I would have given it to you." And that, said Krishna ever after, was the sweetest thing he tasted all day.