17 – Sounds a little Fishy to me

This week we’ll talk about a folk tale from Kashmir, about laughing fish and metaphors gone wild.

The character this week is a lady who’s turned to stone. And the only way she can be turned back is if a very specific person kicks her stone form with his barefoot. How likely is it that that’ll happen by accident?

Now on to the show.

There was once a kingdom, and just like a regular kingdom, it had a king and a queen who lived in a palace. But unlike a regular kingdom, this palace wasn’t far from the hustle and bustle of city life. So much so, that the queen once heard a fisherwoman announcing loudly “fresh fish” right outside her window.

As I am sure you know what regular queens like to do, the queen started haggling with the fisherwoman over the price of fish.

It’s not like the queen had hundreds of servants and cooks who could worry about the price of fish, or what to cook for dinner. Wait a minute, she did! In fact, her servants probably had servants of their own.

The fisherwoman still had to sell the rest of her fish and this queen was taking up too much time arguing about one tiny fish.

Just as she was about to give in out of sheer desperation, a big fish jumped up in her basket. The queen hadn’t noticed it before. It looked splendid and the queen had to change gears – I want that one.

“Name your price,” said the exhausted fisherwoman not wanting to get into another long argument.

“Name your price? It’s usually the buyer who says that. I first need to know if it’s a boy fish or a girl fish”

Before the fisherwoman could respond, there was the sound of laughter. “Did that fish just laugh out loud?”

“It did. Just take it, I’ll pack it for you”

“How dare it laugh? Is it making fun of me?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care. Look, do you want the fish or no?”

“Put that way, I don’t. And don’t come selling your fish here ever again!”

“Believe me, it’ll be a real pleasure not to,” said the fisherwoman as she bounded off.

The queen continued to think about the incident though. She told the King about it and asked what he thought about the fish laughing.

“The fish laughed when you asked if it was a boy fish or a girl fish. Maybe the fish doesn’t believe that gender can be binary”

“You’re speculating. I want a real definite answer”

So the king set about finding an answer. And like a true leader, he delegated this job to his minister, upon pain of death! Yeah, if the minister couldn’t explain within the very arbitrary timeframe of 6 months, the King would have him killed. If the minister did find the answer, “well, what was he expecting, a pat on the back? It was part of his job! Didn’t he read the job description when he applied? Oh and there was also a no-resignation clause”

At this point, I think an ordinary person would simply have made up a story about why the fish laughed, but the minister wouldn’t lie his way out of this. He tried to find the answer. He combed through every library book, spoke to every fish psychologist he could find, read a lot of research papers and even tried to live underwater. Nothing worked, nobody had a convincing reply.

The one that came closest was that probably there was a clownfish in the same basket who had told the fish a joke. But there wasn’t. The fisherwoman was positive- no clownfish in her basket! She had watched “Finding Nemo” and had a strict policy of releasing any clownfish she caught. 

At the end of 5 months, he had run out of options. He knew the King would carry out his promise and execute him. He prepared his will, sold all his property, and amongst other things asked his son to go on a long holiday, in case the King’s anger extended to the minister’s son.

The son, let’s call him Rupak, left town and began wandering the country. He ran into an old farmer and since they were going the same way they decided to walk together. 

They were walking together when Rupak suddenly said: “wouldn’t it be nice if we carried each other for a while?”

“Huh?!” Said the farmer suddenly “on the whole, not to put too fine a point on it, I think we’d better not”. This was making him uncomfortable.

They continued for a while. Then as they passed a bamboo forest, Rupak handed the farmer a knife and said “Here’s a knife, please cut and bring us two horses with it. And don’t lose it”

“No,” said the farmer and returned the knife. He had decided that Rupak was just a simple fool, now. It would be amusing to see what would happen next.

They walked through a city, where no one paid them much attention. “What a cemetery” exclaimed Rupak.

“Daft! He’s daft” thought the farmer

Then they passed through an actual cemetery where some people were grieving for their dearly departed ones. They had food and wine of course, and they offered it to Rupak and the farmer because that’s custom.

When they had their fill and had moved on, Rupak commented “what a great city that was”

The farmer felt amused, next Rupak would be calling the land the sky, or the sky the ocean.

They continued until they had to cross a shallow river. The water wasn’t very deep at all. The farmer took off his shoes, folded his trousers up a bit and crossed. Rupak however crossed with his boots on so they were quite wet.

At this point, the farmer began feeling pity for this simpleton. He invited the boy home as they had just reached the farmer’s village.

“I will come if the beam of your home is strong enough,” said Rupak.

The farmer said nothing and Rupak walked off to the nearby bed and breakfast. 

He went home and met his wife and daughter. He said I’ve got the funniest tale for you. He told them all that had happened between him and Rupak. The wife joined in the laughter but the daughter maintained a serious face.

“Really father you’re calling him a fool but he’s a misunderstood genius”

“Oh, can you explain all that he said and did then?”

“Of course I can. When he talked about carrying each other, he meant you could tell each other a story to pass the time.

When he talked about cutting down two horses he meant for you to cut down two strong and stout bamboo walking sticks which would have been good support as you walked, as good as having horses.”

“Oh,” said the farmer suddenly realizing that this was true

“The city that ignores visitors is no better than if it were full of dead people”

“Zombies?” Asked the farmer

“No, I just meant as inhospitable as a cemetery. A cemetery that is full of welcoming people is like a city with a good tourism budget”

“Good points, but what about the river eh?” Asked the farmer

The daughter’s reply was quick “different risk vs reward calculation that’s all. People who take off their shoes often pierce their feet on the sharp stones, and end up falling in the water and getting wet head to foot”

“Oh, and why do none of the villagers realize this? We’ve been living next to the river all our lives, yet everyone still takes off their shoes”

“Well, sometimes change comes from without,” said the daughter. “The last one was the most obvious. By strength of the beam, he was merely asking if you could afford to host him. 

We certainly can afford to host him for dinner. But first I am going to send him lunch”

She packed bread, a jar of milk and a bowl of porridge and had it sent to Rupak along with a message: “our beams are strong. the moon is full. There are 12 months in a year and the ocean is full”

The messenger walked to the inn, but on the way was tempted to open the package. Naturally seeing the yummy food, he helped himself to some of it. Rupak wouldn’t even know, he thought.

When Rupak received the message and the package of food, he ate it all and sent a message back to the farmer’s daughter: it’s a new moon, there are only 11 months in a year, and the ocean is nowhere near full.

And when he delivered the message he got punished. Because if you didn’t already guess by now, the farmer’s daughter was speaking in metaphor with Rupak. The message was telling Rupak that the jar of milk was full because as everyone knows the moon is made of cheese and cheese is an approximation of milk if you approximate enough. The ocean full of milk was obviously talking about the bowl of porridge, I guess because it sloshes around. There should have been 12 pieces of bread because bread and months…. Well never mind, I’m not even going to try to justify this one.

So that night as Rupak explained his backstory to the farmer’s family, the daughter spoke up: “I know exactly why the fish laughed”

“You do?!”

“Yes! Rupak, you may use metaphors all the time, but now watch a real master at work!

Note that the fish laughed when the queen asked its gender. It did so out of irony!”

“Irony? Is that like goldy and bronzy?”

“No. Dude, for a guy who spews metaphors you sure are taking things literally. The fish laughed because among the Queen’s servants is an undercover spy!”

“Huh?! And you deduced that from just knowing that the fish laughed?”

“Yeah, that’s where the irony comes in. The spy is a guy even though he’s in the Queen’s quarters which has a strict no-man allowed policy. That should not be a surprise because the profession of espionage, like most professions in medieval Indian society, is barred to women. Did you say your dad had 6 months? And that right now it’s exactly 1 day to the deadline? and the kingdom is exactly a day away? Well let’s jump into the saddle shall we?”

“This doesn’t feel like the kind of story that needs a cliffhanger. But okay that means there’s almost certainly going to be a happy ending”

They did jump into the saddle. On real horses, not bamboo shoots.

They made it to the palace just in time to stop the execution and to reveal everything to the King.

The King said ok and had the servants checked discreetly until the spy was revealed. No one thought to ask how a fish that had spent its entire life undersea knew what was going inside the Queen’s quarters on land.

It wouldn’t be a folk tale if the hero and the heroine stayed single, so they got married. They spoke in metaphors forever. When his wife announced that a stork would be visiting them, Rupak bought diapers rather than bird food.

That’s it for now.

Notes on the Show

The name I chose for the minister’s son is not one at random. A Rupak alankar is the Hindi equivalent of a metaphor.

The manner of detecting the spy is violent and misogynistic and also idiotic in the original story. They made all of the servants jump over a pit. The only one who didn’t fall in the pit and break a few bones was the spy because he was obviously trained.

The theme of passing a coded message along with food does occur in a couple of other unrelated stories as well, including in other Indian and European folk tales.

The Character of the Week

The character this week is Ahalya.

The story goes that once there was a rishi who won a contest. This was very similar to the circle the world contest from Episode 6.5 in the sense that the contestants had to circle the world. The winner was Gautum, a rishi who won when he circled a cow. Because cows are sacred in much of Indian mythology, it was a bit of a stretch to declare him the winner, but Ganesh had already done something similar, so there was a precedent for the judges to follow.

The prize was an opportunity to marry Ahalya. I would like to think Ahalya had a say in all this, but that wouldn’t be true.

Ahalya and Gautum lived in a little hut by the river. One day, Indra, the god of heaven and my brother tricked Ahalya. He was a bit like Zeus from Greek mythology. He disguised himself as Gautum and entered Ahalya’s hut at a moment when Gautum was away. Gautum returned soon thereafter and was angry when he saw his wife being friendly to someone else who was obviously not her husband even though he looked and sounded exactly like him.

He couldn’t curse a God, so he cursed his wife instead, turning her to stone, even though she’d been blameless.

He did add an escape clause though – if Ram were to touch her with his feet, she would be human again.

And that’s precisely what happened at the end of the last episode. When Ram and Laxman and Vishwamitra were heading to Sita’s kingdom they stumbled on her, not literally otherwise that would have been painful. Ram, with his Vishnu knowledge, knew exactly what the stone was and he touched it gently with his feet instantly turning her back.

She was happy. She had been between a rock and a hard place for too long.

That’s it for this week.

Next Week

We’ll cover some monkey stories from the Jataka tales where you’ll meet a monkey that can turn cardiologist every day and another that invents a straw

The character next week is a giant crane the bird kind, not the mechanical contraption kind, whose namesake we have already encountered before. This giant crane tried to eat a little boy, and found he had bitten off more than he could chew!