Sheikh Chilli and the Pot of Milk

• 3 minute read
• Ages 6-10
• Moral Stories

Sheikh Chilli was famous in his town for two things: he was cheerful, and he was the greatest daydreamer anybody had ever met.

One morning he was given a large pot of milk for carrying a message across town. He set the pot on his head, steadied it with one hand and began to walk home.

And as he walked, he began to think.

The plan

This milk, he thought, will make good curd. And curd sells well in the market.

With the money from the curd I will buy hens. Say a dozen. Hens lay eggs, and eggs sell, and from the eggs come more hens.

Within a year I will have a hundred hens, and with the money from those I will buy goats.

Goats have kids twice a year. In three years I will have a herd. And with the money from the herd, I shall buy a buffalo. Two buffaloes. A whole yard of them.

And when I have all that, thought Sheikh Chilli, people will come to me with offers of marriage. The best families in the district. And I shall be very difficult about it.

The wedding

He could picture it perfectly.

He would marry into a good family and there would be a fine house and in time there would be a son.

And the boy would be spoiled, of course, because his mother would spoil him. And he would come running to Sheikh Chilli at exactly the wrong moment, when guests were there, and pull at his arm and shout for attention.

And Sheikh Chilli would have to be firm with him. He would have to be very firm indeed. He would draw himself up and shake his head at the boy, sternly, like this —

And he shook his head.

The pot went off sideways, hit the road and broke into six pieces, and the milk ran away between the stones.

Sheikh Chilli stood in the road and looked down at it for a long while.

"Well," he said at last. "There goes the buffalo."

And he picked up the biggest piece of the pot and walked home, cheerful as ever, because there was nothing else to be done about it.