It was the day of the village fair, and Ravi had been saving his coins for weeks. Now, finally, he stood at the sweet-seller's stall with a paper cone full of warm jalebis — golden, sticky, smelling of sugar and saffron — all his own. He could hardly wait to eat them.

He found a quiet step at the edge of the fairground and sat down to begin.

That was when he noticed the other boy.

He was small and barefoot, with a torn shirt and a face thin from hunger, standing a little way off near the rubbish heap. He was not begging. He was only watching — watching Ravi's cone of jalebis the way Ravi himself watched the moon, as if it were something beautiful and very far away.

Ravi looked down at his sweets. He looked back at the boy. And something happened inside him that he could not quite explain.

He thought of how it felt when *he* was hungry — that hollow, gnawing ache in the belly, the way it made everything else seem grey. And he realised, all at once, that the hungry boy felt exactly the same ache that he himself felt when he was hungry. Not a different ache. The *same* one. As if, for a moment, Ravi were standing inside the other boy's empty stomach.

He could not make the feeling go away. The boy's hunger had become, somehow, his own hunger.

Ravi got up and walked over. He held out the paper cone.

"Do you want some? They're really good. I'll share."

The boy's eyes went wide with disbelief, then bright with joy — and the instant Ravi saw that joy light up the thin little face, a happiness rose in his own chest that was far bigger than any he would have got from eating the jalebis alone. They sat together on the step and ate, sticky fingers and sugar-smiles, two boys and one cone of sweets.

That evening Ravi told Nani what had happened, still puzzling over the strange feeling. "It was like his hunger was *my* hunger," he said. "And then his happiness was my happiness too. How can I feel what's inside someone else?"

Nani drew him close. "Because it is the same Self inside both of you, my love. The same light. When you feel another's joy as your own joy, and another's sorrow as your own sorrow — that, Krishna told Arjuna, is the greatest yoga of all. Greater than sitting still. Greater than any prayer. You did not just *share* your sweets today, Ravi. For one moment, you saw yourself in someone else. That is the whole teaching, and you found it all on your own."