In one of the distant villages in India, there lived a small boy named Chandrā with his small family. His father had married another woman after his mother’s death, and the village at that time was suffering from the scarcity of waters, to the extent that all people in the village were going to a distant water well to bring water from there.
The small boy would wake every morning to obtain water from that distant place for himself and for his family. The task of bringing water was heavy upon him because of the length of the road and its difficulty, where he would go alone every morning and return.
While his father’s wife was assigning him this heavy task, she was assigning him easy tasks for her son, and despite that the small boy did not feel any sensation of anger or malice toward his family, for he would perform this heavy work with all love for the sake of his father’s wife’s happiness.
One time, during his return from the daily task of bringing water, he saw a thirsty man resting under a tree, and it appeared upon him hunger and thirst. When he approached him and saw the thirsty man who was carrying the water, he requested from him to give him some of the water to drink from. The boy stood immediately to give him the water vessel that he might drink from it.
The old man thanked him and wished him well and success. The boy completed his walking, and before his arrival at his house—which was distant in the village’s outskirts—he requested from him to give her water to drink. He gave her the vessel that she might drink, and after she finished and quenched her thirst, she thanked him, supplicating to God to bless him.
The boy went to his house happy with the deed of goodness, but when he reached the house, half the vessel was empty. His father’s wife became angry at him and scolded him because half the vessel would not suffice his family, despite that the boy would do this every day when he went out to bring water, and she would complain and be ungrateful and needy for drinking.
So he would give water to everyone who requested it from him, despite knowing that his father’s wife would rebuke him and perhaps beat him because of bringing half the vessel empty. One day, the boy decided that he would not help anyone, and would not give water on the way to the house, for he no longer endured his father’s wife’s cruelty and her threats to him.
And while he was walking slowly on his usual way back from the task of bringing water, he saw a wounded man fainting on the road and requested from him some of the water that he carried on his walking. The boy remembered then that he had promised not to give anyone of the water designated for his family. Yet he was unable to refuse the needy. He gave his share after he gave the thirsty wounded man water and helped him to stand.
When the boy reached the house and his father’s wife found the vessel half-filled with water, she beat him severely and scolded him greatly because he insisted on wasting the water.
The next day, while the boy was blaming himself for not adhering to his promise, a person knocked on the house door with a light knock. The boy opened to him, and the boy opened. Behold, the man standing on the door was the same wounded man who had met him on the road yesterday.
He was indeed the same postman who carried letters, and with him was a letter for the boy from one of the universities that had presented a request for a severe scholarship. The university had agreed to give him the scholarship and had sent it to him by post. Were it not for Chandrā’s helping him the previous day, his application would have been lost, and the letters with him on the road would have rotted, among them the scholarship letter.
The boy thanked God greatly for his helping the man and not withholding water from him. His father’s wife then learned that Chandrā good deeds never go unrewarded. What the boy had done for good returned to him with goodness much greater.
Translated from: Good deeds never go unrewarded