First of all, I want to wish all of you listeners a very happy new year.
If you are wondering about the title of this episode, this folk story from South India “Annabelle and the 40 thieves” – is a mashup of a creepy story of a doll coming to life and Ali baba and the 40 thieves from the Arabian nights. This is a folk tale from a state in southern India called Tamil Nadu.
There was once a happy family in a village, in pre industrial times. The family consisted of a farmer who worked all day in the fields, his wife who worked all day in the house, cleaning and cooking and sewing, and the farmer’s mother who sat around doing nothing. She contributed nothing at all to the household. In fact, she couldn’t even be bothered to speak to her daughter in law.
Except there was one important decision that she would make everyday. And that was a decision everyday on whether the daughter in law should make 2 cups of rice or 3 for dinner. She didn’t communicate her decision through speech either. She would simply hold up 2 fingers or 3. The effect wasn’t important enough, everyone seemed to be content with the decision. The farmer or his wife never ever wished they had 2 cups of rice instead of of 3 or vice versa. Which makes one really question why it was such an important decision.
Well the extent of the daughter in law’s codependency issues was made clear when the farmer’s mother passed away.
The farmer’s wife was distraught. How could she imagine living in a cruel world where she had to make her own decisions?! While everyone admired her for the way she was showing her affection for her mother in law, the daughter in law worried constantly about the decision she would have to make for dinner that night.
She confided her fears to her husband.
Instead of inspiring some confidence in his wife, or volunteering to chip in with the rice decision or even just giving her a coin and asking her to flip it – heads is 2 tails is 3, he instead decided to solve this problem by sending his wife on a shopping spree. Because the only store in the village was that of a potter, the wife came back with a lifelike clay statue of her mother in law.
And then she did the big reveal- one hand was in a 2 finger gesture and the other in a 3 finger one, exactly the way her mother in law herself communicated her decision.
Despite living In a world that makes it easy to make such a binary choice – I mean sure the daughter in law couldn’t ask a Google home or Alexa to toss a coin, but she could have tossed a physical coin, or just depended on the weather or maybe based on the number of oxen on the first cart to pass her house.
Every day from then on the wife would look at the statue from whatever vantage point she was in when the rice decision had to be made. If she saw the 3 finger hand first she would make 3 cups of rice. If she saw the 2 finger hand first she would make 2 cups.
At this point if the psychologists amongst you look at this particular development as proof that she was weaning herself off of her mother in law slowly, you may want to reconsider.
After several days and months when the farmer was finally calculating his income tax returns his saral or turbotax app told him his food expenses were too high. Add to that fact that he had one less dependent to claim, the farmer was bitter.
Why were his food expenses so high? he opened up the spreadsheet where he maintained all his expenses categorized by food. And there was surprised to discover the rice expenses hadn’t gone down they had gone up. He and his wife appeared to be consuming the same amount of rice as when his mother was around.
He had a benchmark as well so he knew it wasn’t inflation or something. Just yesterday, his neighbor and fellow farmer was remarking how little he had to spend on food for his own family this year.
He quickly confronted his wife with the facts and this is where it gets dark.
“Honey, am surprised. we’re consuming the same amount of rice as last year”
“And why shouldn’t we? Why are you surprised?”
“Look I don’t want to bring up the obvious and this maybe a painful topic for you but you’re asking for it. Ever since mother passed away…”
At this point the wife made a shocked face “Hush dear, don’t talk about mother that way. You may be joking and I can see past that. But she wouldn’t”
Suddenly alarmed the farmer asked “who wouldn’t?”
“Why, mother of course ” said his wife.
“If this is about her spirit roaming around and listening in and watching everything we do…..” began the farmer but his wife interrupted him “knock it off, it’s not funny. You know as well as I do mother’s in the next room”
A chill went down the farmer’s spine. He motioned for silence and cautiously crept to the entrance to the next room. He slowly peered in. No one there. Except for his mother. Staring back at him. He was instantly reminded of the time in his childhood she had scolded him harshly for dirtying his clothes. Only it wasn’t his mother, it was the statue.
A thought suddenly stuck him. Do you talk to mother often? He asked his wife
All the time she said. Mother has always been such a good listener.
Does she talk back he asked?
Not more than usual replied his wife – which didn’t reveal much. The farmer’s mother never said anything anyway.
And then suddenly another thought struck him – has she been eating?
Yeah, was the quick reply. she eats and she finishes everything in her plate. I serve her, I’m back in a bit and find she’s eaten everything. Her appetite has never been better.
Instead of this being the scary moment- kind of like when the mom realizes the talking doll never had batteries in it, the farmer had a completely different reaction. Maybe it was the effect of tax day, but he was so annoyed by this that he kicked his wife out of the house. And maybe because there was the remotest chance that the statue was alive and eating off of his earnings, he made his wife take the statue with her.
He really should have found a doctor for her instead. Or at a minimum secretly observed what was happening here. Because the statue wasn’t eating the rice of course. It was the neighbor who would sneak in and make off with the food and eat it at her place
Despite his unsympathetic reaction the farmer will get lucky anyway thanks to his wife even though he doesn’t deserve it.
His wife still carried the statue. Despite having nowhere to go , she went into the forest which was a very poor choice given the wild animals and thieves. Not to mention she had to carry her life size mother in law everywhere.
Finally she decided to spend the night in a tree. She achieved the miraculous feat of climbing a tree with the statue. She tied her sari around the tree. A sari is a very long cloth worn by women in india, very convenient for tying yourself to a tree so that you can’t fall off the tree in your sleep. She still clutched on to her mother in law’s statue.
Pretty soon a bunch of thieves arrived at the base of that very tree. They matched the stereotype of thieves
They wore masks, they carried big bags of gold, jewels and money. No electronics however- pre industrial remember?
They did what thieves do at the end of every heist- they spread a picnic blanket, spilt out the loot and began splitting it out.
Just then the farmer’s wife who could no longer hold on to the statue let it slip out of her hands.
The statue fell with a huge crash and broke into pieces. All the thieves ran away on impact, frightened by what they thought were demons in the dark. I mean it seems a bit paradoxical for thieves to be scared of demons and the dark, given they operated in the dark, mostly robbing strangers who for all they knew could turn out to be demons.
She waited a few moments to make sure the thieves weren’t coming back. And then hopped down. The sight of all that gold made her forget her broken mother in law.
She quickly carried all the gold she could and instead of buying the Windsor palace or the Eiffel Tower with it, she went back to the one person whom she knew. The one who had kicked her out in the first place. Despite the way he treated her.
His initial reaction of annoyance at seeing her again immediately changed to joy as he saw all the gold.
Which goes to show money can buy you love, and a cure for psychosis as well.
So once you have a lot of gold, what’s the first thing you do – you need to know how much it is.
The only sensible way to do that is to measure the amount of gold by weighing it. For that you need a weighing scale. They didn’t have one.
While some people would simply have bought a weighing scale at this point, the farmer didn’t want to do that. He was a data guy, and he needed to measure the entire amount that his wife brought back, and buying a weighing scale would mean there would have to be some gold taken out.
He suggested “Why don’t we borrow our neighbor’s weighing scale?” He’s got the latest ergonomic weighmaster model it prints your weight on one side and your fortune on the other”
The wife rolled her eyes, “Our fortune’s made. It doesn’t need telling. But I’ll borrow their scale it’s a lot closer than going to the store “
Their neighbor was surprised that the farmer and his wife had anything worth measuring. She had been upset ever since the wife had been kicked out because that meant she had to cook her own food. She was surprised to see the farmer’s wife back, and was further surprised that she needed to measure anything, much less at the scale the weighmaster was capable of. I mean if it were anything light, the farmer and his wife could have done it the very scientific way of left hand vs right hand. She quickly greased the bottom of the pans. Because she had read the story of Ali baba and the 40 thieves and knew it worked for Qassim’s wife.
She was rewarded. With a gold coin just like Qassim’s wife. And just like Qassim’s wife, the neighbor convinced the farmer’s wife to tell her everything. And just like Ali baba’s wife, the farmer’s wife told her as well but swore her to secrecy.
The neighbor was incredibly jealous of the farmer’s wife and decided to one up her.
The neighbor had a special statue made and promptly took it the same tree. She was getting tired of waiting when suddenly the same thieves arrived. Before you accuse the thieves of a lack of judgement consider that this may have been a ruse to see who came and took all their gold the previous day.
Not long after, the neighbor dropped the statue down on purpose and it did seem to have the effect she intended.
The thieves scampered but not too far. Once bitten twice shy. They kept watch from a distance.
The neighbor jumped down from the tree eagerly unwrapping the loot.
The thieves seeing how they had been fooled were sure the neighbor had pulled this trick on them the previous day as well. They promptly disposed of her and went back to their happy life of thieving and robbing.
I don’t want to say the farmer and his wife lived happily ever after.
After the way he had treated her the wife realized she didn’t need to be with him. All the money she had earned in a single night was more than what the farmer had earned in his entire lifetime. She hired the most expensive Bullock cart with a convertible top, a cart driver in livery, dual cup holders and a dvd player and set off on a round the world trip.
That’s it for this week!
If you likes this story, you might want to listen to a folk tale from the state of Maharashtra, from the Halloween episode, “The Pumpkin Monster”
Character of the week
Meru is a gigantic mountain. That isnt exactly Mount Meru. Meru is a mountain, but not just an ordinary mountain. First of all its the center of the universe in a physical, metaphysical and spiritual sense. Secondly its size is what makes it extraordinary. Its about a million kilometers or almost 700,000 miles high. Thirdly, what makes this mountain special is its composition. It presents 4 faces – crystal, ruby, gold and lapis lazuli, because why not?
There are many depictions of Mount Meru, here are some links:
Mt Meru example
Example from Cambodia
Another example depiction
Cosmic turtle and Mt. Meru
Bhutanese example
Tibetan example
Thai example
There are a few different actual mountains on Earth called Meru, there’s one in India, another in Indonesia and a third one in Tanzania. The one in Tanzania isnt, but the other two were definitely named after the mythological Meru.
Next Week
Next week, we’re back to Krishna as we talk about some events in his childhood and adolescence, including one that may have a special meaning for an upcoming holiday in India.
The character next week is a snake. A very special snake, since its behavior is tied to the flow of time. When the snake uncoils, time can move forward. But when it coils, time stops and the universe ceases to exist.