The fair came to Ravi's village once a year, and the whole of Mithila seemed to pour into the field behind the temple. There were stalls of glass bangles, mountains of orange jalebi, a wheel of swinging seats, and a man who made monkeys dance to a little drum.

Ravi went with his friend Bittu, whose pockets jingled with coins. Moti the puppy trotted behind them, sniffing every dropped crumb.

At the first stall Bittu bought a wooden top, painted red. He spun it once, grinned, and said, "Look what I got!" But before the top had even stopped spinning, his eyes had already jumped to the next stall. "I want that kite," he said. "And after the kite, the slingshot. And then the big drum."

He bought the kite. He bought the slingshot. His arms grew full. Yet his face did not look happy: it looked hungry, the way Moti looked when he smelled jalebi he could not reach.

"This one's mine now," Bittu kept saying, hugging his pile. "And that one will be mine soon. And the next." He said it over and over, like a song with no end.

Ravi had only two coins. He thought hard, then bought a single warm jalebi and broke it in half — one piece for himself, one for Moti, who licked his fingers and thumped his tail. Ravi sat on the temple step and ate slowly, tasting the sweetness, watching the wheel turn against the evening sky.

Bittu found him there. His arms were heavy with toys, but his mouth was turned down. "I still want the drum," he muttered. "And there's a better kite at the far end. I didn't get enough."

Ravi looked at his empty hands and his full, content heart, and then at Bittu's full hands and his restless, hungry face. He remembered something Nani had told him while she painted: "A greedy mind keeps saying *this is mine, more will be mine*, and never once stops to say *thank you, this is enough*." For the first time, Ravi understood exactly what she meant.