My article this time consists of a gist of two folk tales written by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. These hail from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab and send out a genuine message to mankind regarding how tricking a person into doing something proves fatal for one's own self. I liked the way the author had put the stories. I enjoyed reading those while reading between the lines. The stories are pure fantasies and cannot in any form be taken seriously.
The tale from Uttar Pradesh is about a lethargic monkey who was once asked by his mother to chop off his most prized possession; his golden hair for she believed that he'd get married only after he gets good riddance of the golden hair. Hence, the monkey goes to the barber to get his hair cut and in return he confiscates the barber's razor by which the latter cut his hair. The barber, astonished, asks him for a reason for the confiscation. The monkey, almost while taking to his heels, shouts at him that it was a price he had to pay for lopping off the love of his life.
The monkey then stumbles upon a gardener trimming a hedge and suggests him to trim the same with the razor he had. The gardener was ecstatic to try the job with the razor but unfortunately, the razor gets ruined. Hence, the monkey snatches away his blanket. The gardener interrogates him on his doings and doesn't let him go with the blanket. The monkey insists that since the gardener took away his razor, he ought to take his blanket.
The monkey encounters an oil-seller shivering in the cold. Therefore, the monkey offers him blanket and in return takes away his oil can and bolts off. The seller regrets to have had a conversation with him but he was ultimately rendered helpless.
Next, he chances on an old lady selling puris and when he notices she had fallen short of oil, he offers her the same and thereafter runs away with an entire platter of fried puris.
The monkey's antics come to an end when he chances upon a wedding procession and offers everyone there the fried puris. He then walks up to the bride, picks her up in order to get married to her in return of the puris he offered to the entire party in the procession. But the party rebels and helps the bride to get off his clutches and the monkey is eventually driven away from the place.
The other tale comes from Punjab and is based on a rat. Once, this rat finds a man with hungry children trying to ignite a fire. Seeing them in a pitiable state, the rat offers the man a dry root to burn which he had stored at his place for tough days. The grateful family then offered the rat a morsel of dough to show him their thankfulness. The rat discovered that helping people in their difficult times also makes him strike gold since they help him back. That day onwards, he kept searching for needy people.
One day, the rat sees a potter whose children were crying from hunger since there is no flour in the house to cook. The rat offers him his dough to cook. Having happily satiated his children and himself, the potter, as a sign of showing gratefulness, gives the rat a fine pipkin. The rat was thankful yet again.
The rat runs into a cowherd later. He saw him milking buffaloes into his shoe since he was too poor to afford a pail. The rat graciously offered his pipkin to milk the animals. On receiving the pipkin, the cowherd was so elated that he offered the rat a few sips of milk. Th rat wanted something better in return for his deed. Hence, rejecting those few drops, he put forward his demand of having an entire buffalo to himself. The cowherd agreed to it and the rat set off with the buffalo.
Walking down the lane with the animal, the rat bumps into a wedding party which was less fortunate for not having any meat to cook. The rat immediately offers them the buffalo to be killed and the meat to be cooked. After everyone was done having meat, they offered the rat the remnants. The rat rejected the same and instead asked for the bride in the form of recompense. The party shuddered on learning his intentions and left the place in no time leaving the bride behind.
The bride was a princess and she spent one entire night with the rat. The next morning, the rat sends her out to sell fruits around town so that she could buy food and eat. The queen sees her daughter selling fruits on the road and her plight. They are reunited. The rat, who had been keeping a close watch on the princess demanded her to be returned back to him. The queen asks the rat to come to her palace and he agrees. The queen makes him sit on a seat which contained a red hot stone beneath it. As soon as he is seated, he jumps off because he gets burnt and he never saw the princess and queen ever again.
The similarity between both the incidences is that the protagonists could not manage to get married and stay with their mates. The difference lies in the way they start off with their trickeries. The first story depicted the behaviour which was lazy and greedy. The seconds story started on a good note where the rat happens to help the family only accidentally and his intentions change as the story unfolds.
What Johann says sounds very prudent: 'The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart' . The essence to be taken from these stories is that deceit gives us momentary happiness and we lose everything we have in the end for a lifetime.
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