For two whole weeks, Ravi had been carrying something heavy, even though his hands were empty.

The heaviness had two parts. The first was a grudge. His friend Arun had laughed at him in front of the others when Ravi's kite crashed, and Ravi had been holding that small sharp hurt ever since, taking it out at night to look at it and feel angry all over again. The second was a craving. Ravi wanted — more than he had ever wanted anything — the bright red top in the toy-seller's basket, and the wanting sat in his chest like a stone he could not put down.

He was grumpy. He snapped at Moti. He could not enjoy his food or his games, because the grudge and the craving filled up all the space inside him.

Then one ordinary morning, sitting by the well, Ravi made two small decisions.

First, he thought about Arun — not the laughing Arun, but the Arun who had shared his lunch when Ravi forgot his, the Arun who had taught him to whistle. And quietly, without telling anyone, Ravi decided to let the grudge go. He just... set it down, the way you set down a heavy bucket. "I forgive him," he said softly to the well. "It's finished."

Then he looked toward the toy-seller's basket and the red top inside it. And he felt the craving loosen its grip. "I don't need it," he told himself, half surprised to find it was true. "I have enough. I'll let it go too."

And then something happened that Ravi would remember for the rest of his life.

He felt light.

It was as though two stones he had been carrying everywhere had suddenly lifted off his chest, and he could breathe all the way to the bottom of his lungs. The morning looked brighter. Moti's tail-wag made him laugh out loud. Without the grudge and the craving crowding him, there was room — room to be kind, room to be happy, room to run to Arun and say "let's fly kites."

That evening he told Nani, "I let go of being angry at Arun, and I let go of wanting the red top — and I feel so light I could float."

Nani's eyes shone. "You closed two of the gates, Ravi," she said. "Anger and wanting-too-much. And do you see what walked in the moment they shut? Not nothing. The very best things. That lightness you feel, that is your own good heart, finally given room to move. Krishna says it leads all the way to the highest place there is."