The priest, dressed in faded robes, sits idly on the temple steps, watching others toil. Today, like every day, his stomach growls as he wonders when fortune might finally smile upon him. He used to beg for alms.
The priest moves through the crowd, his wooden bowl extended in hope. After many refusals, a kind woman hands him a pot of creamy milk. "Thank you, generous soul," he mutters, clutching the pot tightly to his chest as he hurries back to his humble dwelling.
The priest tenderly pours some milk into a bowl and sips it, savoring its richness. He adds a spoonful of curd to the remaining milk and covers the pot with a cloth. "By morning, this will be thick, delicious curd and could be a key to end my miseries," he whispers, his eyes shining with hope.
"1.If by morning the pot of milk set, it would be converted to curd. 2. If I churned the curd , I would make butter from it. 3.Then, with a little luck, If I heated that butter, I would make ghee out of it. 4. If I took the ghee to the market, I would sell that gheefor a handsome price. He dreamt on and on. . . a smile spreading across his face. 5. If I got the money, I would buy a hen. 6. If I bought the hen, it would lay many eggs. 7. If it laid eggs, they would hatch. 8. If the eggs hatched, there would be many more hens and cocks. 9. Wow! Those cocks and hens would lay hundreds of eggs if I had so many cocks and hens. 10. If all hens and cocks laid hundreds of eggs, I would own a poultry farm of my own. 11. If I owned a poultry farm , I would sell all the hens of my poultry to buy some goats. 12. If I bought some goats, there would be hundreds of goats soon. 13.If I had so many goats, I would sell them all to buy cows and own a milk dairy. 14. If I owned a milk dairy, All the town people would buy milk from me. 15. If all the town people bought milk from me. , I would be very rich. 16. If I were very rich, I should buy a lot of jewellery. 17. If I had a lot of jewellery, the king would buy all the jewellery from me. 18 .Wow! I would be so rich if the king bought all the jewellery from me. 19. I would marry an exceptionally beautiful girl from a rich family if I were rich. 20.If I had an exceptionally beautiful wife, I would have a handsome son. 21. If he did any mischief, I would be very angry and would teach him a lesson. 22. If I had to teach him a lesson, I would hit him with a big stick.
Dreaming so, he was so involved that he involuntarily picked up the stick next to his bed and thinking that he was beating his son, raised the stick and hit the pot. The pot of milk broke and he awoke from his sleep.
The priest sat frozen, staring at the spilled milk. "All my dreams… gone in a moment’s carelessness," he laments softly. He bows his head, realizing that idle dreaming cannot replace hard work, no matter how sweet the vision.
