In
India, the hot summer months are followed by the monsoon season.
During
one summer, a little ant ran from one place to another busy hunting for food.
She worked all day and stored food in her mud hole.
A
grasshopper, who dozed on a tree branch in the sunshine, saw the ant.
He
asked her,
“Hello,
little ant, why are you working so hard? Enjoy the good weather.”
The
ant’s tiny legs wobbled as she balanced a huge particle of food.
She
looked up at the grasshopper and panted,
“I
am storing food for the monsoon.”
The
grasshopper thought that the ant was foolish for wasting away the lovely summer
by working so hard.
He
continued to doze in the sunshine all through the summer.
When
monsoon arrived, it was difficult to find any food.
Since
the grasshopper had not stored any food, he starved to death.
The
wise ant, on the other hand, had enough food to last the monsoon season.
(Fable Retold)
My cousin M has a 2-year-old daughter. He thinks that "maybe the ant shared some food with the grasshopper" would have been a better ending.
ReplyDeleteI told him that parents of the very young are free to edit according to what they feel is a comfortable ending. However, from a teacher's point of view, I feel that life is real and it is better for children to learn bitter things through stories.
M said he "always wondered why a lot of nursery rhymes in so many languages are a bit gory at times".
When I told my daughter about this exchange of ideas with M, she told me a completely different ending that she had heard at Sunday School - the ant gives all her food to the grasshopper and dies herself!