‘The Lost Child’ is a famous story by Mulk Raj Anand. In this story the narrator narrates a story of a boy who went to a fair with his parents.
Summary
Many people including men, women and children in new clothes in a happy mood were going to join the fair. The boy was very happy and excited. He demanded the sweets and toys displayed in the shops. He felt attracted towards many things so he lagged behind time and again. When the boy demanded a toy, his father looked at him red-eyed in his familiar tyrant’s way. The boy tried to catch the dragon-flies in the mustard field on the way and again was left behind. Then his parents called him again. Then his parents took rest for a while under a banyan tree and after some time they reached the fair. The boy lost his mind in the whirlpool of the fair. Then he suddenly listened to the loud voice of a sweet seller and slowly murmured ‘I want that Burfi’. But he did not do so for fear of his father. He also eagerly watched gulmohur flower, balloons.
Then the boy boldly requested his parents to let him have a ride on a roundabout and turned back to look them. But to his surprise no sign of them was there. A full, deep cry rose within his dry throat and with a sudden jerk of his body he ran from where he stood, crying in real fear: ‘Mother, Father’. Now the boy had been separated from his parents. The poor child struggled to make his way between the feet of people but was knocked to and fro by their brutal movements. He might have been trampled underfeet, had he not shrieked at the highest pitch of his voice: ‘Mother, Father’. The boy was not able to find his parents anywhere.
A kind-hearted man lifted up the boy in his arms and tried his best to console the boy. That man took the boy to a flower– seller, balloon-seller, snake-charmer, juggler and for joy-ride also. But the boy had no interest in all these things except his parents. He cried and sobbed, ‘‘I want my mother, I want my father!’’