Hitopadesha – Claws, Wings, and Fledglings – {Ep.194} – Stories From India – Podcast

Today’s story is from the Hitopadesha. It features a vulture, a cat and a day care for little birds that pays a very heavy price for not investing enough in the interview process.

Introduction

Welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you exciting and fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

So let’s dive right in.

The story begins with a vulture. An old vulture. She was not like the other vultures we have seen on the show. Like Jatayu and Sampati in the Ramayana. She was just ordinary. Except that she can talk. Every bird or animal featured in today’s show and indeed in most episodes on this show is able to effortlessly communicate with all other birds and animals.

And yet today’s vulture was different in even that regard. She could communicate but purely by sound. Because she was almost completely blind. It’s fitting then that we shall call her Andhi, a hindi word that means blind.

And despite being blind in a merciless environment and surrounded by animals red in tooth and claw, Andhi survived. Not by any special effort on her side. Andhi was a big vulture. Her size often intimidated other birds. And often that was enough to protect her from the threats that she could not see. 

Andhi managed to survive. Not by any special ability of hers but through sheer dumb luck.

She relied on charity. The NGO, Sightsavers Birds of India, gave visually impaired birds like her nests to live in, and frequently sent volunteers to ensure they didn’t go hungry. A delivery specialist, also called a dabbawala, took seeds and grains for the vegetarian birds they were helping. And for the birds of prey like Andhi, the dabbawala would take mice. The NGO was funded by some of the richer birds who just wanted a tax deduction. This worked really well. Until one day when it backfired horribly.

That was the day Sightsavers sent a new dabbawala on duty to feed Andhi. In retrospect, the dispatch manager admitted that a rabbit wasn’t the best choice of animal to send to a blind vulture. Andhi just assumed the live rabbit was a bonus along with the live mouse.

Needless to say, Sightsavers evicted Andhi, even though it was perhaps their own fault. Maybe they should have kept Rabbits on vegetarian bird feeding duty. Or better, simply trained both Andhi and the rabbit to prevent this unfortunate misunderstanding. Anyway, now that this happened the consequences were bad for Andhi. If the matter had gotten to real court instead of just undergoing a media trial, she might have gotten off okay.

While one faction of the press focused on labeling her as a vicious murderer who was secretly not blind at all, the other faction which usually just took the opposite view said that the focus was the poor bunny’s family. And that angle took a long time to cover because the bunny had hundreds of children and grandchildren left behind.

Andhi was constantly reminded of her crime every day in the news, both in primetime, and in the braille version of her newspaper. And what’s more, everytime she went anywhere there were rude journalists who thrust a microphone in her face and asked her “jab aap woh bechare rabbit ko kha rahe the, aapko kaisa lag raha tha?”

Well she just found a new place to migrate to. By accident. Literally. She flew off from her home in a random direction and didn’t stop flying for days. Until one day she did. But not by choice. Because she slammed straight into a tree and collapsed on the forest floor.

A bunch of birds flew to her right away. “Oh you poor thing!” said one concerned parrot.

“Are you okay?” asked a concerned sparrow asking a question she already knew the answer to.

“Here, how many feathers am I holding up?” asked the Bulbul

“I don’t know,” the vulture said “I can’t see”.

“Oh no! Call 100” said a crow. “She can’t see”

The vulture had to clarify that it wasn’t the bump against what she supposed was a tree that blocked her from seeing. She also asked for where she was, to get her bearings and to make sure she was nowhere near her home forest. But that should have been obvious from the fact that no one recognized her from the tabloids and the news.

The birds took pity on her, almost as if it was their fault she had had the accident. As if their home tree had suddenly snuck into the flight path of the vulture with no prior warning.

They fed her, gave her water. And made a nice little bed for her in the hollow that was at the base of that same tree. The rest of the birds lived in various branches, so they were all neighbors now.

Things were going quite well at that point for Andhi, despite her terrible beginning. Having an extra mouth to feed meant more hunting work for the birds. Especially when that extra mouth was as big as Andhi’s.

Andhi wasn’t a freeloader. She realized this and volunteered to help. But there were limited things she could do. And everyone understood that.

Finally, they all agreed there was one thing that Andhi could do. It was to mind the children. You see, all of the birds who lived on that tree had little hatchlings. They were all just a few days old, and they were a source of joy to their parents. If mama and papa bird had to stay hunting longer it meant that the babies would be by themselves for longer too. And that meant danger.

You see, the forest had all kinds of wild animals. The one the birds most feared was a wildcat. Because this wildcat, whom we’ll call Junglee Billi, could easily climb trees, and her favorite food was bird sandwich. But instead of two slices of bread, the wildcat just used two other birds. That did not make the bird parents happy. Not the choice of meal their children became, but the fact that their children did not survive the horrid wildcat. But now that Andhi was here, everything was going to be fine! The birds could go and hunt, Junglee Billi could come by and try but the vulture was going to protect their babies. They were confident this would work. The vulture was several times as large as the cat. There was no way Junglee Billi would dare try anything.

So they did just that. Of course they filled in Andhi on the wildcat’s horrible behavior in the past and strongly cautioned Andhi against letting her appear anywhere near the nest. All Andhi had to do was to appear threatening if Junglee Billi appeared on the scene.

The birds buzzed off and Andhi continued her nap in the hollow of the tree.

Junglee Billi had been watching the skies from a long distance. The moment she saw the birds take off, she made straight for the hometree. She didn’t know a new nanny lived there. Junglee Billi thought this was going to be another free lunch. She’d pick a baby parrot here, a baby pigeon there. Maybe if she hadn’t nonchalantly whistled a tune she would have been detected. Before Junglee Billi could even make it to the base of hometree, Andhi swooped out of the hollow. “I’m the terror that flaps in the night!” she said in her best Darkwing Duck imitation. She also didn’t realize it was daytime and not nighttime.

But this had the effect that she wanted. Junglee Billi was scared. And rooted to the spot. She knew vultures and she knew she could not outrun this giant bird. It would quickly fly and grab her in its talons.

“Identify yourself,” Andhi demanded.

“B..B..Billi” the wildcat stammered.

“B. B. Billi?” Andhi repeated. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to Junglee Billi? Or maybe you call her J. Billi?” Andhi asked

Junglee Billi quickly realized that her reputation had preceded her. She denied knowing anyone named Junglee Billi. She had heard of her crimes in the newspaper of course, but that was it.

Andhi relaxed her defenses and soon they began chatting. It soon became clear to the wildcat that Andhi was blind, which made her relax as she set in motion her treacherous plan. B. B. Billi, as Junglee Billi called herself, claimed to be a vegetarian and a saint and a scholar, who had come because she had heard some very unspecific tales of Andhi’s wisdom.

Wouldn’t Andhi please tell her a few of those stories?

So Andhi obliged. And went on and on about all these stories from her youth, how she had sailed across oceans, flown into the Sun, caught lightning in its beak. All this while, Junglee Billi added an appropriate number of oohs and aahs. The stories went on for quite a while. Billi encouraged Andhi to continue telling the stories and not worry about her guest’s hunger. You see Billi was a vegetarian like she said earlier. She had packed herself some very vegetarian sandwiches which had no baby birds in them whatsoever, and she would just eat while Andhi continued her stories.

This seemed okay to Andhi, and so she continued telling her stories till later in the evening when B.B.Billi said that she had to go now, but thanked Andhi very much for the stories. Andhi was so pleased that she had a fan, that she totally did not realize that there wasn’t a single tweet or chirp anymore from any of the nests. The wildcat had eaten them all.

When the birds got back, what do you think they did? They only saw all of their babies gone, and lots of tiny bones scattered all around Andhi. And they came to the wrong conclusion. Andhi must have eaten their children. This was further reinforced when the parrot, who was a little forgetful at times, suddenly remembered seeing a news report about how Andhi had eaten up a poor bunny who was taking care of her.

It ended on a sad note for Andhi, who was pecked to death by the very birds that had kindly hosted her, and whom she had been trying to pay back by minding their children.

The moral is clearly that it’s a jungle out there. There are evil people everywhere who would take advantage of you if you were to turn a blind eye. Extreme caution, bordering on paranoia is the way to go. Kind of like how Mad Eye Moody was in the Harry Potter stories.

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

The Hitopadesh borrows from the Panchatantra. It’s in Sanskrit too. It was thought to be written by Narayana Pandit, a scholar from the 12th century. Both the Hitopadesha and the Panchatantra usually use animal characters to make the point.

The Panchatantra is strictly speaking a chain of stories. At the conclusion of each story, one of the main characters narrates a new story, so that by the time you get to the end you’ll see that none of the inception-style stories within stories is actually complete. The Hitopadesha is more loosely connected.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll go back to the Mahabharata. We’ll continue the story of the Pandavas and Kauravas. We’ll see their professor, Dronacharya, claiming his tuition fees not by asking for heaps of gold, but by exacting revenge on a King he held a grudge against for years.

Feedback

Thank you all for the comments on Social Media and on Spotify’s Q&A! I can’t directly reply to the questions there, but I’ll address them here on this show.

Aarush, I will be continuing Chandrakanta soon. And Akbar Birbal too.

Thanks Rez, Hotwheels Yedant Man, Vamsi, PKB, Juhee, Keith and Harish.

Madhura, I’ll do a story on Shivaji. Vamsi, Mayasura’s story will come up soon too. I thank you for your patience.
Interesting suggestion Harish, for a story featuring ghosts. I think I have a couple of stories that might be what you’re looking for. Keep an eye out for this in the near future.

If you have any other comments or suggestions or if there are particular stories you’d like to hear, please do let me know by leaving a comment or a review on the site sfipodcast.com, or tweet @sfipodcast, or reply to the questions on Spotify Q&A. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook.

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A big thank you to each of you for your continued support and your feedback.

The music is from Purple Planet.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time!