By a special listener request, in this episode, we’re going to do a little Konkani folk tale. From the Western Indian state of Goa.
Our story begins with a beggar lady, Bhikari. And her daughter Bharo. As is usual in the begging profession, Mother and daughter were homeless. Their address was basically just the corner of Nehru road and Vasco road. It was a fine morning bright and clear when Bhikari positioned her bowl, her purposefully handmade sign requesting people to give so that they would receive more in return. She had to add a qualifier to the sign that donors would receive their principal with interest only in the afterlife. That was necessary because too many people mistook her for a financial advisor.
“Wake up Bharo” she called to her daughter, who was still sleeping. This was a hard enough profession even without Bharo making things worse by sleeping through the busiest part of the day when people would be out and about.
Bharo muttered that she didn’t want to wake up, and continued to sleep on.
Bhikari reminded her daughter that if she didn’t wake up and beg, how would she earn any money? And if she didn’t earn any money, how would she survive?
“Mom, your entire argument is flawed. You are assuming that I need money to survive. I can live on a single paisa”
This remark that Bharo could survive on the smallest unit of money was by chance heard by a Prince who just happened to be passing by at exactly that time.
It might surprise you that the Prince was out and about in the middle of the town square so early in the morning. I mean this is a guy who had everything in the Kingdom at his disposal and no one had any expectations from him in return.
Well, don’t hold your breath. For the Prince, it was the end of a late-night painting the town red with taxpayer money, rather than an early morning welfare visit of his subjects.
When Rajkumar, for that was the Prince’s name, heard Bharo claim what she did about surviving on a single paisa, it was love at first sound. He decided immediately and on the spot that this was the only possible woman he would marry. Even though he had barely seen her, talked to her, or given her the chance to object.
Inexplicably, he didn’t linger long enough for the woman of his dreams to wake up, so by the time he had returned to the palace and decided to take concrete next steps he hadn’t actually even seen his bride.
He had a devious plan that involved lots of emotional blackmail. He knew that if he straight-up announced his intention to marry the beggar lady’s daughter, no one would take him seriously. So he made himself conspicuously absent. By hiding out in the stables.
He found the coziest spot in the stables and armed with a warm blanket, a good book and a bottle of wine made himself comfortable for what was sure to be a long wait.
It worked. The palace went into a frenzy. No one had seen or heard from the Prince for 4 hours. And he had missed dinner and the cocktail hour. For the Prince, this was quite unusual.
People looked for him everywhere. If there had been security cameras they would have looked at those.
By and by, a large group of stable girls came by. Rajkumar tried to ignore them and continued to read his book. That did not work. The girls were giggling and chatting and the stable acoustics only amplified their voices.
It turned out that the stable girls weren’t here to search for him. They were just here to feed the horses. Or so Rajkumar thought. That was certainly their assigned work, but what they were actually doing was to eat the horse food. Either these stable girls could eat raw grains without too much trouble, or those horses were in the habit of being fed human food. The story does not specify.
Either way, the same Prince who had no problems with burning taxpayer money somehow had major problems with his stable ladies helping themselves to horse feed.
A Prince concerned about the welfare of his subjects would have examined the underlying reasons behind this behavior, perhaps concluding that a pay raise might be in order. But not Rajkumar. He jumped out of his hiding spot and said “Gotcha! So this is how you’ve been stealing food from my horses”
Rajkumar expected them to be ashamed, to grovel at his feet and beg for forgiveness. But the strapping young prince had much to learn. The stable ladies did not react the way he expected. They earnestly began discussing him amongst themselves.
“That is the prince,” one of them said
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go get the reward! There are 5 of us. Each of us is going to earn 100 rupees!”
“Old news!” said a third. “500 was the reward money an hour ago. It’s now a whole 1000”
At least at this point, the Prince should have realized that Stable girls were indeed underpaid.
The girls went to the King. They told him where the Prince could be found for which they collected their reward.
Despite having given away his hiding place, the Prince was feeling far too lazy to shift camp.
And when the anxious King, his entire cabinet of ministers, the Queen, the butler, the cook, the baker, the Prince’s personal bartender with his drinks cabinet, the doctors with ambulances and stretchers rushed to the scene, the Prince was still there. He was not in a good mood. Or at least he pretended to be.
It took several drinks and several of his favorite dishes to even reveal what he was unhappy about. And it was only after the King and Queen made the very rash promise of agreeing to whatever he wanted that the Prince revealed what was bothering him.
The King and Queen’s immediate reaction was not so bad but every time the Prince responded to their questions they progressively became skeptical of the whole thing.
“Why that’s wonderful news!” said the Queen. “Is the girl someone we know?”
“No” replied the Prince
“Someone we’ve met? A princess from a neighboring Kingdom?”
The Prince shook his head
“Not, not one of our subjects?” said the King aghast
“Quiet, Honey” interrupted the Queen. “It’s perfectly okay for a Prince to marry a subject. My Uncle’s fifth cousin twice removed, married a Noble once. Or so I heard from my third cousin’s sister-in-law. Rajkumar, you just tell us what house she belongs to”
But Rajkumar told them that the girl was definitely not a noble.
The King was about to explode, but the Queen patiently reminded him that a promise was a promise. She asked if they could write to the girl’s parents.
When Rajkumar indicated that letters could be addressed to the lady who lived at the corner of Nehru road and Vasco road, the Queen’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I’ve seen that mansion often when I’m out shopping. What a lovely mansion. So what if the girl isn’t a noble. At least she’s rich”
At which point Rajkumar had to clarify that the girl and her mother lived not on the street but on the sidewalk. In a makeshift tent.
And that he hadn’t even seen the girl. He’d only heard her voice. Once.
Well, the King and Queen loved Rajkumar as only parents can. They gave in. The wedding was grand. And the bride looked so majestic in her wedding dress no one could have guessed her humble origins. Some did suspect though when the mother of the bride kept asking the other guests to drop a coin or two in her salad bowl. “Bhagwan ke liye!” she said.
The newlyweds went on their honeymoon straight away. To an island in the Indian Ocean in a custom-built ship. But this was not like a regular honeymoon. The Prince had a sinister motive in mind. You see, Rajkumar was going to test Bharo.
She had claimed that she could survive on a single paisa. So now was her chance to prove it.
So after the ship reached the island in the middle of the night, the Prince and the crew secretly crept out of the ship. They chartered a different ship back home.
Bharo as you may recall preferred to sleep in. So it wasn’t until noon that she even realized she was all alone on the ship. Also absent were all her jewels, her money, and anything she could have bartered with.
There was no note from her husband. But there also wasn’t any sign of a struggle so this was unlikely to be a case of kidnapping. No, this was some kind of deliberate setup. Maybe a game that rich people liked to play, and given her poor upbringing she was probably just unaware of it
She had better focus on arranging for food she thought. The problem? There was no food in the pantry. There were also no carrier pigeons on board. She was well and truly on her own.
She waited but dared not to go ashore in case she ran into the harbormaster, whom she had secretly watched as he pasted a couple of parking tickets on the boat. Evidently, Rajkumar and his crew had not fed the parking meter. If they had been in control. She had still not ruled out the possibility of kidnap and ransom.
After fumbling for a whole day, and not eating any food at all, she was starting to get desperate. She had considered selling the boat but the ignition key was missing and she didn’t know where the deed to the boat was kept or if it even existed. No one in their right mind was going to buy the boat from her without an ignition key and the deed.
Finally fumbling with her Saree she suddenly noticed that in one corner of it there was something tied. It was a single coin. One paisa.
Well here goes all or nothing she thought. She waited until she saw a fishing vessel close enough to her own ship. She requested the elderly fisherman who was sailing that boat to come to help her.
When he did appear she requested him to bring her whatever rice this single paisa could buy.
“A thimbleful at best,” said the fisherman. But he helped her anyway. It was more than one thimbleful. But not by a lot. Eating plain cooked rice was not going to satisfy her hunger by any margin. But she had to try, didn’t she? The moment he brought back the tiny little portion of rice, Bharo in her desperate attempt to receive it accidentally dropped it all in the water.
The fisherman shook his head and sailed off.
Bharo was angry, annoyed, and frustrated all at once. Why didn’t anything good happen to her? All because she had bragged about being able to live on a single paisa.
Now as she looked at the spot where the grain fell in the water, she observed a large school of fish. It seems like each had only grabbed a single grain of the few dozen that had fallen. But then something curious happened.
Right after each fish in the school grabbed a grain, it swiftly swam towards the shore. And threw up.
Yes, that’s right. Bharo couldn’t imagine why but when she had a look at the island bank where the fish were throwing up, the vomit looked like solid yellow coins. She finally plucked the courage to go ashore, narrowly avoiding the harbormaster.
The spot where the fish were throwing up was covered. And in fact, had she not observed it from her boat, she would not have realized it was there. She went through the bushes and located the fish vomit. It really was solid gold!
This was amazing!! Bharo sprung into action. She quickly dashed off with the coins hidden in her saree. She paid off the harbormaster, got herself a lavish dinner, and tipped the old fisherman rather handsomely. She didn’t know how long her luck would last or what the life expectancy of these fish was, so she continued to focus on producing as much gold as she dared, building a stockpile that might have given Scrooge McDuck a run for his …., well, money.
At her rate, it was no more than a week before Bharo became the richest person ever. Or rather, the richest man as the townspeople thought of her. Given the patriarchal nature of Medieval Indian society, Bharo had concluded that disguising herself as a man was the only way to get anything done.
She needed to do something with all this gold she was earning. She commissioned a huge mansion right there near the harbor. It was extraordinary with multiple swimming pools, tennis courts, and a golf course all within its grounds.
A few days passed. Bharo was settling into her role. She had a full-time army of secretaries who helped her with her investments. Meanwhile, the construction of the Bharo tower, a skyscraper, was coming along fine.
It was around that time that the Prince decided he’d given Bharo enough of a chance to prove herself. He went back to the island. When he got there, he still saw his boat. It was parked where he had left it. No differences. Except that Bharo was not in her bed and that the pilot’s windscreen was plastered with parking tickets. This little jaunt was going to cost his taxpayers a pretty penny. He couldn’t just ignore the tickets or he might lose his boating license.
But back to Bharo. The Prince concluded on absolutely no basis at all that Bharo had drowned.
He thought “oh well” and went ashore to go drown his sorrows in the bottle..
An hour later, even in a deeply inebriated state, the Prince was perceptive enough to realize that the Bharo tower which was right before him now, had not existed on his last visit.
This looked like an amazing place! And the name, Bharo seemed familiar. Like it was the name of a person or place he had deliberately been trying to forget.
He walked into the building and was greeted by a hostess who politely asked him if we would like a welcome drink and a cookie.
“Do you even know who I am? What if I’m just here by mistake? Or asking for directions to someplace else” he asked her
“That’s fine. Our big boss, Bharo, has asked us to be super nice to everyone. That’s the best way to build goodwill he says”
“You said “he”? Not “she”?” asked Rajkumar.
“Of course,” said the hostess. “Now if you’d like to apply for a job, there are several openings. I can refer you for a position as Fifth Undersecretary’s 3rd Undersecretary in the International Expansion. It’s an important position and judging from your foreign clothes you’d be suitable for it. I must caution you though. Bharo himself approves every appointment.”
That was a lucky break for Rajkumar because when Bharo read his resume she recognized him for who he was. Even though he’d tried to disguise himself on his application.
Instead of a desk job, she had him do manual labor on the tower instead, which he surprisingly agreed to. At last, the tower was finished.
Bharo announced a grand celebratory feast. Just for her and Rajkumar.
The workers’ union would have liked to take issue with this. They hadn’t spent their blood, sweat, and tears on building this tower only for this newcomer to have a 1-on-1 dinner with the owner. As if he did all the work. But Bharo just flung more gold coins their way and the union changed its collective mind.
So at the appointed time, Rajkumar showed up in his best clothes. Which weren’t very impressive because he had had to spend all of his money on the parking fines for his boat. But still, his appearance fit his persona. He was ushered into this grand dining room. As he marveled at the spread, he recalled that this was finer than anything he had experienced back in the Kingdom.
As Rajkumar waited for his host to enter, Bharo showed up. But this wasn’t Bharo the CEO that Rajkumar had known for years. This was an elegant lady dressed in the finest of clothes and jewels.
So his initial suspicions were right! There was a connection between Bharo the CEO and his wife. Only the connection was deeper than he had expected because he did not realize they were the same person.
He explained how marvelous it was that she had “passed a test” and was definitely worthy of him. Bharo sitting across the table from him in her finest silk saree and wearing diamond jewelry looked at Rajkumar in his tattered and greasy construction worker clothes and raised an eyebrow.
She politely responded that she was grateful for that feedback and that he considered a worthy employer. And if he needed a job as a Mid-level construction worker, she would not be opposed to her foreman writing him a letter of recommendation.
“I don’t understand,” he said puzzled. “Aren’t we going to get back together? I swear that’s what the original folk tale said we were going to do”
“Well, then the folk tale must be mistaken because as of this moment, you’re fired!”
At least, that’s the way I wish it had happened in the interest of rationality. Instead, in a very cringe-worthy moment, Bharo begged the Prince to forgive her for employing him as a laborer. They made up, she gave up her budding enterprise and went back with him to his kingdom.
A few notes
The story did end with the note that the couple lived happily, but I don’t know. I just don’t buy Bharo being happy about swapping her rich business empire for the mediocre palace life.
And more importantly, I just don’t get how Bharo could have been happy if at one of life’s most stressful moments she had the additional stress of the possibility that her hubby might jump out from behind a curtain and say “Gotcha! I was only testing you”.
The story also doesn’t at all explain why she chose to let Rajkumar work for her. And what was the point of waiting to reveal her secret?
The beginning of the story may remind you of the famous German fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin. Just like that story, this one begins with a poor girl bragging about her extraordinary abilities. It’s easy to argue that living off of just one paisa is no less extraordinary than spinning straw into gold.
But the similarity there is that in both stories, their bluff was called by the Prince or the King, basically the royal in charge.
Konkani is a language that is spoken in many parts of western coastal India. It’s also the official language of the state of Goa.
A paisa was not the smallest minted coin available at the time. The one mentioned in the story is a dambri. A dambri is a quarter of a paisa.
A dambri was also not the smallest unit of a transaction. It was just the smallest coin. A dambri was equivalent to 10 cowries, and each cowrie was equivalent to 3 phooti cowries.
That’s all for this week.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll delve back into the Mahabharata. The story continues with the newborn children in Hastinapur who are all grown up and looking to have children of their own!