Eagam Khaling
A young painter got his first opportunity to exhibit his artwork at his country’s national art exhibition museum. He cut his long hair, shaved his beard, and wore ordinary clothing to appear as an average person. He visited every wall of the exhibition hall and properly absorbed every work of his contemporary artists. Finally, he came to the section where his paintings were displayed. He explored all the paintings with the curiosity of an art enthusiast. One of his paintings was the portrait of a little boy crying alone on the seashore. He looked at the painting intensely for a while, and then suddenly went out to a lonely corner of the garden outside; there he sobbed like a child. Rubbing his eyes with his bare hands, he sang in a crying tone:
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveller in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”
When the painter finished singing the rhyme, he turned back—there he found a little boy staring blankly at him with his dropped jaw. He tried to hide himself with a half-smile, but the boy asked with sarcasm, “Uncle! Are you a little boy?”
The painter held the boy’s hands with a heavy heart and replied with hidden emotion in his eyes, “Yes! I am a little boy like you, who still waits for his mother sitting on the seashore, just like in one of the paintings on the walls.”
