Bengali Folk Tale – Hiraman and the Princess – {Ep.189} – Stories From India – Podcast

Today’s story is a Bengali FolkTale about a parrot that can do anything – including growing wings on a horse, restoring sight to the blind, and navigating to obscure kingdoms

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.

Bird hunting finances

“Bird hunting is not a lucrative profession.” The bird hunter said to his wife. “Especially not in medieval India” 

“And how did you come to that conclusion?” His wife asked. “Could it be the subtle and not-so-subtle hints that I’ve been dropping every single day for the last 12 years?”

“Nope,” the bird hunter said, “a little bird told me. This little bird.” And he held up his hand to show a little baby parrot. 

“That’s a Hiraman parrot, or Plum headed parakeet” the wife said. She was a budding ornithologist. “They are endemic to India. And they can be trained to talk. This one’s a baby. I’m sure it couldn’t have told you anything. You are imagining things. You must be drinking on the job again.”

“On the contrary, sister,” the parrot spoke up. “He isn’t imagining things, and neither are you. I can talk. And I stand by what I told your husband – bird hunting is not profitable. But I can change that for you, because by capturing me, you’ve really hit the jackpot. You’ve won a prize so big you’re going to make a killing”

“No, no, no. It was just an expression. I didn’t mean that literally” the parrot hastily added as the bird hunter got out the skillet and the chopping block. “I’m too small to be eaten anyway. I’ll tell you how you can make a lot of money quickly”. And the parrot did tell them.

Get Rich Quick schema

It sounded like a good plan, so they acted on it right away. The bird hunter took the bird to the King, and presented it. The King naturally asked what the bird hunter would like in return. As rehearsed, the bird hunter said that the bird would name its own price.

“50,000 rupees” the parrot said, on cue.

This wasn’t a new experience for the King. He replied “50,000 rupees is a lot of money. Even for a bird that is perfectly trained to say ‘50000 rupees’”

The parrot had anticipated this. “It’s worth it, your highness. Because this bird isn’t just trained to say 50,000 rupees. I’m your inexhaustible reservoir of knowledge. I know the encyclopedia in and out. I know the names of the 330 million gods that your people worship. I know some Bollywood film dialogues too. And if all that isn’t enough, I also happen to know some secrets that I’d rather not reveal in this public setting”

That was enough for the King to give in. He was worried that the parrot had spied on him last night when the King had sneaked some cookies when he was supposed to be on a diet. Because the King already had 6 wives, he would likely get 6 times the heat a person might expect from one partner.

The bird changed hands. The bird hunter got 50,000 rupees. But because he wasn’t financially savvy, he spent it all on crypto-rupees against his wife’s objections that a crypto market wasn’t likely to return anything for centuries at least. Seeing as computers weren’t yet invented.

The King asked the bird if it had a name. To which, the parrot replied “Rishte me toh hum tumhare tota lagte hain, magar naam hain Hira”.

Hira – was that short for something like Hiranyakashapu? Wondered the King. But it wasn’t. It was short for Hiraman, which as the Bird hunter’s wife noted is the name of that species in India. 

The King meanwhile spent all his time with the parrot, with the enthusiasm of a first-time Google Home or Alexa owner. To the point that the King’s 6 wives got incredibly jealous. When the King was out hunting – they did something about it.

Someone annoyed by Alexa or Google Home’s chatter has the option to simply unplug the device. But that was not the case with Hira. There was no on/off button either. They looked. They decided that what they needed to do was to dispatch this bird to the afterlife. 

These 6 conspirators crept into the room where the parrot was kept, a variety of weapons in their hands. Hira sensed their intent and immediately began reciting the names of the 330 million gods it knew. If there’s one thing that can stop a royal assassin’s plan, it is a fear of divine intervention. The 6 queens were no exception. They hurried back to the royal conspiracy room to discuss their next steps. They finally hit upon a plan. They would ask the parrot a question that it could not help answer. They would ask which one was the most beautiful amongst them and which one was the least. And when the parrot answered, that would give one of them the moral justification to be offended by Hira’s answer and they could do the gory deed.

They went back to Hira’s chamber. Without weapons this time. At least visible weapons. But Hira was clever. The parrot said that it was impossible to tell them which one was most beautiful and which one was least from the confines of the cage. Open the cage door, and I’ll examine all of you from all angles, and I’ll tell you.

The queens did open the cage. Hira did not examine them from all angles. The parrot merely flew to the nearest window and said “Fools! All of your beauty, even combined, cannot match the beauty of the little toe of the princess who lives beyond the seven seas and thirteen rivers.”

Hira flew off and found a home in a poor woodcutter’s home. I guess Hira was used to being around people and didn’t want to take a chance out in the forest.

Meanwhile, the King returned and he wanted his 6 wives to take a chance in the forest. He insisted on it. Their foolish intervention had cost him his parrot. Now they would have to go defend themselves in the forest. If they were lucky they might find a group of dwarf miners like Snow White did. Going by the ratio, there would have to be 42 dwarves if they were to all survive. Anyway, he wasn’t going to hear any of their objections. And they couldn’t deny their involvement. He had the security footage from the cameras he had secretly installed in Hira’s room. And because this is medieval India we’re talking about, the “cameras” were really just people hidden in closets.

The queens didn’t last very long. It’s worth debating if the King could have handled the situation in a way that did not cause loss of life, but it would not be a very long debate.

Hira, on the other hand, hung around at the woodcutter’s home living a peaceful life. This was interrupted, one day, by the beating of a loud drum. It was an announcement from the King. You know town criers and such. If anyone could bring back Hira, the King would pay them 50,000 rupees. Everyone was puzzled about what a Hira was. Those who knew what it meant, immediately bought picks and shovels and went mining for diamonds.

But Hira knew exactly what the King meant. He sighed and thought maybe he’d better return after all. Or these announcements would go on forever. Aloud, to the woodcutter, Hira asked “how would you like to make 50,000 rupees?”

The next day, the woodcutter was 50,000 rupees richer and Hira was back in the palace. The parrot kept glancing around nervously until the King assured him that the Queens were all gone. “What happened to them?” asked Hira

“What happened?! ‘What happened?’ He asks. They got checkmated, that’s what happened”

“Umm, no.” Hira retorted. “I see what you tried to do there, but you can’t checkmate a Queen, so your chess analogy falls flat hopelessly. Also, I’ll have you know, my pronouns are she and her, not he, and him.”

The King was shocked. “You’re a girl?”

“No, I’m a parrot. I’m a female parrot. I’ve always been a female parrot. You just didn’t realize it”

“I’m sorry” the King apologized. “Somehow I assumed all the main characters in a folk tale would be male”

“Don’t mention, I get that all the time” the parrot dismissed politely. “Now, can I have a cracker”

“Yes! You can have lots of crackers. But first tell me about this princess who lives across the seven oceans and the thirteen rivers”

“Ah the motive emerges” Hira said “is this why you were desperate to find me?”

“Yes. No. Well I wanted to talk to you. But also, when my security camera people told me all about what you said to my Queens, it made me wonder. See how until last week I had 6 Queens, and now I have no one? So I might be on the lookout for a new alliance”

Hira replied “You know. I really should be questioning your motives here. But you’re the King, so you get a free pass. I can take you to her”

Where exactly is she? The King asked. “I’ve had cartographers working on finding a Kingdom that is seven seas and 13 rivers away. No ideas yet, but the leading theory is that she’s right in the neighborhood. Because the world is round, if we draw a line curved enough, we can cross seven seas and 13 rivers and land up right here somewhere.”

Hira laughed “Your cartographers are on a wild goose chase!”

“Princess chase,” corrected the King.

“Whatever! They are assuming this story is set in the real world. It’s not. We’re in a folk tale. The Geography here doesn’t match what’s out there. Anyway, don’t worry about it. I can take you there to the Princess’s Kingdom. But first we need a Pakshiraj”

The king didn’t know what a Pakshiraj was, and said so. It’s a type of horse, explained Hira.

So then, the King and Hira walked over to the stables to look for a Pakshiraj. The King was rather proud of his horse collection. He had the largest horse collection of all the Kings in his monarch guild. If there was such a thing as a Pakshiraj, it must be in his stable.

But it wasn’t. The stable manager had never heard of a Pakshiraj. Did they mean Garuda? Because Pakshi means bird and raj is King, so the King of the birds, as in Garuda? But Hira said, no this was definitely a horse, but the stable head was on to the general idea.

There were hundreds of horses there. After scanning them all carefully, Hira concluded none of them was a Pakshiraj. At this point, everyone had concluded that a Pakshiraj was just a made up concept. But that’s when Hira spotted it. “There’s your Pakshiraj” she pointed to a dull and dirty looking horse, very thin and malnutritioned.

The stable manager laughed. This wasn’t even a proper horse. This was a lame piece they had gotten in a buy 1 get 1 free offer. He hadn’t taken care of it, because what was the point? It probably couldn’t run or walk much either. It didn’t even look like much of a horse, let alone a flying horse. Wait a minute, “flying horse”! Was Hira really looking for a horsefly? Because they had plenty of horseflies here in the stable. And mosquitoes. Everyone in the stable constantly wished someone would invent a bug zapper or an electric fly swatter. Could the King do something about it?

But King stopped paying attention the moment the stable manager began complaining. Hira prescribed a diet of strictly highest grade oats for the Pakshiraj. It would take 6 months for this horse to be ready, Hira said. Everyone listening thought Hira was going to cook up an excuse  at the end of the 6 months. Or hope everyone else forgot. But they were the ones surprised when day by day the puny little horse strengthened visibly.

At the end of the 6 months – the horse had become the strongest, the fastest amongst all of the King’s horses. And of course it had sprouted wings. The stable manager’s face looked like he was going to try to use the same diet on all of the other horses, and on himself as well.

Anyway, now that the horse was ready and because the King had been getting impatient all this while, they set off at once. Before they did, Hira had strongly warned the King. He must only nudge the horse twice. If he did it thrice or more, the Horse would not make the entire journey in a flash, it would instead get stuck midway.

Keeping this in mind, the King gently nudged the Pakshiraj twice. Instantly, the horse leapt up into the sky and within seconds had accelerated to near the speed of light it seemed like. A bizarre and dizzying few seconds later, they landed right in the Princess’s garden.

Their plan was simple and smacking of evil. The horse would stay hidden in the shrubbery waiting for a whistle. The King would be hiding up a tree, Hira would be on the tree trunk at human height. Hira would sing a song “Preetam aan milo” – whatever that was. The hope was it would attract the princess there. The Princess would approach Hira out of curiosity. Hira would whistle at which point, Pakshiraj would jump out from behind the shrubbery, the King would jump down from the tree, carry the Princess and jump on to Pakshiraj, Hira would hop on to the King’s shoulder, the King would nudge the horse twice and they would all reach home. Hira added that the King need not worry about the carrying the Princess part. She was light as a feather.

The King clarified that that was not the part he was worried about. Wasn’t it better for him to just introduce himself and woo her like he would normally have done? Why was abducting her necessary?

Hira said it was necessary. The King didn’t know it but the Princess had been secretly pining for him. She had heard stories of him. Besides, wooing her was not an option. Maybe 6 months ago, it was. But now, her parents were going to forcibly get her married to someone else. There was no time remaining to try a Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge style wooing. Her father, a lot worse than Amrish Puri’s character in DDLJ was not going to ask his daughter to go live her life.

The King said he didn’t know what a DDLJ was, was it a puppet show? He wasn’t much into these movies, as these puppet shows were called. But anyway, he was going to trust Hira completely. She was right about everything so far, she must be right about this too.

So, the stage was set and the players were all ready. The Pakshiraj hid in the shrubbery, the King in the tree, and Hira launched into a rendition of the song “Preetam aan milo”. The Princess was curious and approached Hira. Hira whistled when she stood on the spot marked X. The Princess was puzzled, she didn’t remember a whistle in the middle of that song before. But she didn’t have time to think about it further, because she was scooped up in the arms of the King who jumped down from the tree, and leapt onto the Pakshiraj which appeared out of nowhere. Hira hopped onto the King’s shoulders and said “Fasten your seatbelts”. As Pakshiraj lifted off, the King gave it an extra nudge to hurry up. 

That’s right. He did the one thing he was not supposed to! The consequences were a near crash landing somewhere. They didn’t know where they were, but it was a dense forest. The Pakshiraj had lost its wings and was looking sad and pitiful, like it appeared when Hira dn the King first saw it 6 months ago. The Princess didn’t know what happened and was staring in shock. Only Hira asked the right question. “Are o Raja, Kitne nudges lagaye?” Hey King, how many times did you nudge Pakshiraj?

The King said sheepishly that he had nudged him thrice.

“Maine do kahan, aur tumne teen nudges lagaye! Kya samajh ke teen nudges lagaye? Hira khush hogi? Sabasi degi?” sticking to her bollywood fangirl status, of course.

The King looked like he would die of embarrassment. But what could he do?

They were going to be stuck here for 6 months, or longer if it took time to get Pakshiraj the oats it needed to recover. He introduced himself to the Princess he had originally intended to.

The Princess did not scream for help, or run away looking for help. I guess she figured it was safer to stick with this odd crew as long as they didn’t pose an immediate threat.

The days passed and learning their story she began to bond a little better with her kidnappers.

Meanwhile in the forest they didn’t really find any oats. They did find some fruits though. And they found another King. Or rather this other King found them. To avoid some confusion, let’s call him evil king.

In a word, this Evil King was, well, evil. The moment he saw this odd family, he did whatever an evil mastermind might do. He had the King blinded, and he abducted the already abducted Princess. And he took the horse too for good measure. Not that he wanted such an ugly looking beast, he said. But he only did it because the Princess insisted that if he was going to marry her, the horse was dowry.

The Evil King was surprised. “Oh is that a horse? I wouldn’t have thought it to look at it”

The Princess had another condition. According to her horoscope which she coincidentally had had a consultation on just before being captured here, if she got married in the next 6 months her husband would pass away during the wedding.

The King was surprised by this. He couldn’t see anymore, but he could hear all that was said. “What horoscope consultation” he started to say, before the Princess shushed him. He kept quiet but kept thinking about this. It’s a good thing they got captured here. He had intended to marry the Princess as soon as he got back to the Kingdom, that was close shave – otherwise he might have passed away during the wedding.

The Evil King, in true evil mastermind fashion left the blind King to fend for himself. With the wild beasts in the forest, his end would be coming soon. Maybe this was poetic justice for what the King himself had done in abandoning his 6 wives to the wild beasts.

And what was Hira doing all this while, do you think? She wasn’t on the scene. She had flown a long way off to get their bearings. And she had managed to figure it out! But when she went back with the good news, and saw everything that had happened, she had no Bollywood dialogues to describe the devastating situation.

She was a little smarter than the King, so she could tell why the Princess had made the 6 month horoscope claim. Pakshiraj would have recovered his wings by then. And any escape would rely on Pakshiraj.

She confirmed this, by flying to the palace everyday where the Princess was held prisoner. The Princess had more good news. In her Kingdom was a cure for blindness. There was this eagle’s nest on the highest mountain in her land. In that nest, if there were any eagle chicks, a few teardrops from those chicks would cure any kind of blindness. And not just blindness, all kinds of eye disease. Don’t know how or why, but it was found to work. That’s why everyone in her kingdom had 20/20 vision and no one wore glasses, the Princess explained.

Well, as it happened, 6 months is the amount of time it would take Hira to get there and back. You see parrot flying time is much slower than Pakshiraj flying time.

But for the King’s sake, Hira was ready to make the trip. She did, she went to the highest mountain. Most of the eagle’s nests there were empty, but finally she found one where the last chick was about to leave its nest forever. Hira implored the chick to give her just a few minutes of her time. She didn’t ask for tears too, because she knew the story she had to tell would bring the tears on automatically. And they did. Quickly collecting the tears in a little test tube, Hira flew back swiftly. Swiftly was still 3 months of flying. 

Hira was relieved to know that the Princess had been right. The teardrops did cure the King’s blindness. It would have been particularly bad if all this had just been elaborate revenge for her abduction. Somehow the King had managed to survive in the forest despite all the wild beasts around. The parrot had made an arrangement with bird friends who would bring fruits to the King. In return, the birds would live off of some exquisite bird food that the Princess would sneak out of the palace.

But Hira’s and the King’s fear did not disappear there. The 6 months were up. What if the Princess got Pakshiraj and just flew off with him? Wouldn’t she think of the King and Hira as just extra baggage?

But then the Princess did appear at that moment on the fully recovered Pakshiraj. “I know what you’re thinking,” she told them. “Why did I come back? Couldn’t I just have gone on to see the world by myself now that I have a Pakshiraj. And you can bet I know exactly how to fly this horse properly. But the truth is, Hira is too valuable a friend to lose. She knows too much. I suppose for Hira’s sake I’ll also have to marry you” she said the last part to the King. The King and Hira nodded enthusiastically. “Fine, but I get to pick all our travel destinations from now. And let’s hurry, the sleeping potion I put in the Evil King’s wine is going to wear off soon.”

So they hopped on the Pakshiraj, and finally got back to their Kingdom. Via a slight detour to some famous places that the Princess had always wanted to see.

Hira meanwhile hoped that they would make a movie out of this. Her Bollywood obsession would be pointless otherwise.

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

The story is similar in some ways to the story of the Firebird and the Gray Wolf. It’s a popular Russian folk tale if you haven’t heard it before. In it, there’s a Prince who goes on a quest for a magical bird – a firebird. He gets help from a gray wolf. A talking animal that knew everything about how to reach the firebird. And not just the firebird, he also knew the location of a magical horse and a beautiful princess. And that’s not all – the gray wolf also knew exactly how the Prince could get the horse, the firebird and how he could carry off the Princess. The Princess in that story doesn’t get a say either, and she seems to happily accept her abductor as her future husband. But only her first husband and not her second. Because just like in today’s story there is someone who steps into the hero’s shoes, without the hero’s consent. By taking over the Prince’s horse, the bird and by trying to marry the Princess. Regardless, it’s the talking gray wolf who again comes to the rescue.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’re going back to the main storyline of the Ramayana. The last time we covered it was a while ago. We had left it at the point where Hanuman had returned to Ram after his successful scouting trip to Lanka. We’ll see Ram, Laxman and the Vaanars quickly spring into action as they try to reach Lanka.

Feedback

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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!