"Just one last story mumma, please ?"
"Ok, but promise me you'll go to sleep after that !"

 Her 3 year old daughter looked up at her with expectant eyes. She was a patient listener, very very fond of stories. She could tell her daughter the same stories over and over again and her daughter -Antra, would just lie beside her, and listen with the same eagerness as she had done when she first heard the story. Her favourite story was that of a little tailor-bird called tuntuni who was the pet of a very cruel Raja. The Raja loved her but he had caged her in a tiny golden cage where she did not have enough space to even spread her wings ! Tuntuni wanted to be free and fly to different places and see the beautiful things all over the world, so one day she decided it was high time she did something. When a servant came to feed her at the same time that he always did, he noticed that the little bird lay still in the cage. Naturally, he thought she was dead. He ran to call the Raja who ran to see his beloved bird. The Raja had grown worried. He opened the cage door to check what was wrong and just then Tuntuni hopped out of the cage, stretched her wings and flew away, never to return to the Raja's kingdom.
But today, Radhi had decided to tell her daughter a different story.One that her grandmother used to tell her when Radhi was about Antra's age. She had loved the story and kept asking her grandmother to repeat it, just like Antra did now. She looked into her daughter's eyes and saw she, not for the first time, how much she resembled Radhi.
"Is it going to be Tuntuni mumma ?" "No sweetheart, I'm going to tell you a different story, one that my grandmother used to tell me" An excited smile flashed across her face, she pulled the blanket over her feet and readied her self for a new story. 

Radhi looked at her innocent little daughter one more time and at that point she felt the same feeling yet again. She wanter her daughter to never grow up, to always be the innocent little thing that derived pleasure from all the simple things in life, like listening to stories...She wanted her daughter to love her as much as she did now and wanted to be the most important thing in Antra's life forever, as selfish as that sounds. She dreaded the years to come, when she knew her little Antra would grow up, make new friends, sideline her mother and maybe even feel ashamed of her. She could feel the lump forming in her throat but she ignored it, pushing these thoughts away. She smiled at her daughter, and derived pleasure from her slight innocent face. Yes, one day her daughter would feel ashamed of her, but that day was not today. Plus that was the way of life, it was nature.
Pushing all these thoughts aside, she narrated her favourite story to the little girl and watched as Antra drifted off to sleep. The pushed the locks of hair, that had freed themselves from her daughter's ponytail, away from Antra's face, gently lifted her head and placed it on the pillow and gave her daughter a goodnight kiss before drifting off too sleep herself.