Upamanyu: The Boy Who Asked for a Milk Ocean

Ask for the infinite. Shiva delivers.

A small boy named Upamanyu tastes milk at his uncle's house and refuses to go back to rice-water. His mother shapes milk from ground lotus petals. He finds her out and runs into the forest to do tapas. He asks Shiva for a river of milk and Shiva grants it. The lesson reads what the boy's hunger was actually for.

The Bowl of Rice-Water

In a small ashrama near the foothills of the Himalayas, sometime in the long Puranic stretch when the rishis still walked the forest paths and their children were raised on whatever the forest gave, a boy named Upamanyu sat in front of his mother holding a small wooden bowl. He was perhaps five years old. The bowl was full of a thin white liquid. He had eaten it every day of his life.

Upamanyu's father was the rishi Vyaghrapada, the one whose feet had become tiger-like from years of standing in the forest. The family was a Shaiva ascetic family. Their food was simple. Their house was a hut of leaves. The white liquid in the bowl was not milk. It was rice-water, the cloudy water left after rice had been boiled, which the mother had been giving the boy and calling milk because there had never been milk to give.

That morning was different. The day before, Upamanyu had walked with his mother to his maternal uncle's house some distance away. His uncle was wealthier. His uncle had cows. At lunch, Upamanyu had been given a small cup of warm cow's milk for the first time in his life. He had drunk it slowly. He had set the cup down very carefully. He had not said anything.

Now he was home. The bowl in front of him was rice-water, like every other morning. He looked at it. He looked at his mother. And he began to cry.

"Amma," he said. "This is not milk. I have tasted milk. This is not it."

The mother sat down in front of him. She did not lie a second time. She told him the truth. They were poor. They had no cows. The white drink she had been giving him was rice-water, and she had called it milk because she could not bear to tell a small child that he had never had milk.