Gone with the Scooter

This is the story 'Gone with the Scooter' from your book, Santoor (Chapter 2). Here it is, told in short.

One hot summer afternoon, Gopi was reading a book in the veranda. Suddenly he heard something rustle past and fall with a thud in the garden. Was it a mango from the tree? He ran out to look. He searched in the thick grass near the fence and found nothing. He looked among the bushes, and again found nothing. Then he saw a white ball lying on a heap of dry leaves. It was a hockey ball!

Gopi looked outside the gate, but nobody was there. His mother called him in from the heat. Gopi decided that he could not keep a ball that was not his. He would ask around.

In the evening he went to the playground where his friends played hockey, and asked if anyone had lost a ball. Manoj said he had lost a ball four months ago, so Gopi said this ball could not be his. Ramani said the ball was his, but when Gopi asked him its colour, Ramani smiled and said, "Show me the ball and I will tell you." Deepak boasted that his father had bought him a brand-new football. Gopi told him that the ball he had found was a hockey ball. Everyone laughed.

Manoj grabbed the ball, and Gopi said they should play before it got dark. Manoj kept goal. The ball went from Gopi to Deepak, to Ramani, who dribbled it, and then to Jay. Jay hit it so hard that it flew past the playground gate and dropped into the basket of a passing scooter! The scooterist did not know and rode away. By the time the children reached the gate, the scooter and the ball were gone. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.