When I was in upper kindergarten, I was brimming with confidence, proud of everything I had learned in the past year. I could tie my shoelaces, walk to and from school and friends’ houses, and I had mastered the alphabets in both English and Hindi. I could even recite a few poems, one of which was “One, two, buckle my shoe.” The line “nine, ten, a big fat hen” stuck with me because it was always the hen that laid eggs—until one day, I saw something that left me utterly confused.
In a neighbor’s garden, I spotted what appeared to be eggs growing on a cactus plant. I may not have known the word “chicken,” but I was certain that hens were the ones who laid eggs. Baffled, I couldn’t understand this strange “egg-plant” that no one had ever told me about.
When I asked my neighbor, she played along, explaining that eggs grew on cactus plants and were later given to hens. For quite some time, I would visit her regularly, eagerly checking to see if new eggs had popped up on the plant. I don’t recall how long this illusion lasted, but after I left that town, I never encountered such an “egg-plant” again.