In this episode, we’re back to Vikram and Betaal. If you have not heard the previous stories, I do recommend that you check out the links in the show notes. If not here’s a short summary.
Vikramaditya whom we are just going to call Vik was a King. He was a wise King and generally nice to his people if you ignore the incident where he unleashed a venomous scorpion on his brother.
He started receiving gifts from a mysterious rishi, or holy man. Those gifts were mangoes, and Vik too polite to decline the humble offerings had collected a whole pile of them before realizing that each mango contained a precious gem. And this truckload of mangoes now had doubled his treasury.
Well, Vik was indebted to the rishi given he had already accepted all that wealth. So in order to pay the rishi back, he agreed that he would fetch the rishi a Betaal. A Betaal is a reanimated corpse, or revenant. And if that is not creepy enough, Vik had even promised to fetch the Betaal from a crematorium in the middle of the night. All by himself.
Vik did and the creepy Betaal cooperated when Vik slung him on his back and began walking towards the rishi across the dark deserted crematorium. The Betaal told Vik a story to pass the time. Which wasn’t a story exactly. It was a puzzle. And Vik being smart and all that could not resist answering. When he opened his mouth to answer the puzzle, that somehow allowed the Betaal to escape. And Vik fetched him again and heard another story, rinse and repeat about 25 times. We’ve covered many of those stories before and this one is just another of those.
This story as usual begins with the Betaal again being carried across the crematorium. He again mentioned that it was a long walk and Vik was almost certainly going to be bored unless he heard a story. And the Betaal had just such a story up his sleeve.
Looking at the expression of horror on Vik’s face, the Betaal quickly added that he meant his shirtsleeves and not the body part.
Vik looked puzzled at the Betaal’s arms which clearly were not covered in shirt sleeves
“Let it go. It’s just an expression okay?”
“Let me just cut to the chase. This story is about the ancient Indian version of the bachelorette. About a woman who underwent some extremes of emotions and had to make a choice in the end. Well hear me out and you’ll see what I mean.
The Betaal continued his story.
On the banks of a river, there lived a family. That included elderly mom, dad, and their son and a daughter. The family made do with nothing much at all. The mother was a housewife, the father was a beggar, and their son cut wood. The girl did not do much. Or maybe she was a professional damsel in distress. Regardless, what she did is irrelevant to the story. The profession of the other family members is not. Because that is how they met the contestants on this ancient Indian version of The Bachelorette.
We ignored her profession, but we’ll give the girl a name. As the story mostly revolves around her. Let’s call her Abhagya.
Abhagya’s father was away at a beggars’ convention. Just outside a temple where the earnings were most promising. He struck up a conversation with the guy next in line and soon they were talking about everything under the Sun. While literally standing in the Sun.
As is likely to happen when you put two like-minded people next to each other for too long, these two soon became best buddies. So much so that when Abhagya’s father found out this recent friend of his had a marriageable son he promised to let him marry Abhagya. Just like that, no thought of speaking to Abhagya first or consulting with other members of the family or matching horoscopes. It’s as if he just didn’t care.
Well, that behavior must run in the family, because Abhagya’s mom and her brother did exactly the same thing with people they had just met too. Abhagya’s mom met her friend at the grocery store. Realizing that her friend’s son was about the right age, she hastily decided that this was the chap Abhagya would marry.
The brother similarly committed Abhagya to a union with some chap he met at the bowling alley.
It is remarkable how the only person who actually had the authority to make such a major decision about her life was the one who didn’t do so. When Abhagya came home and heard three very similar announcements, she was distressed.
“Marriage is not top of my mind,” she told her family. “I’d rather study, or travel the world or write a book.”
“Your husband can help you achieve your goal,” said her mom, her dad, and her brother in unison and then stopped and looked at each other.
Abhagya’s brother shrugged and said, “Well, my choice is an editor. He can help publish her book”. The other two candidates were a travel agent and a Dean at a University who could have helped Abhagya achieve her other equally preferable goals.
This was a tough problem to solve, but Abhagya agreed to at least meet the candidates. If she thought that would help her eliminate two, she was totally wrong. They were all equally polite, equally charming, and equally in love with her.
She was at a total loss until her brother suggested she go and think about it overnight. “A solution may present itself,” he said.
“Whoever heard of such a thing?” asked Abhagya frowning at this silly suggestion.
“It worked back in Episode 34 in another Vikram and Betaal story. A Princess had to choose between 3 suitors and overnight it all worked out”
“Well I haven’t heard that episode, but if you say so,” said Abhagya as she went off to bed.
The three suitors camped out in a tent nearby. The next morning, when they woke up and rang the doorbell. No one answered.
“This is totally off-script. Is this some kind of joke?” asked the editor.
“If it is, it’s in very poor taste,” replied the Dean. “I might have to give them detention”
“Maybe they won a lucky cruise overnight and have weighed anchor” chimed in the Travel agent.
But when they snuck in through an open window, they discovered a terrible truth. It turned out a vicious snake had snuck in, possibly through the same window, and bitten everyone in the family. No one had survived.
The three suitors were all distraught. What was their purpose in life anymore, now that the only woman they would ever love had been snatched by cruel fate? But they managed to hobble on.
Seeing as Abhagya’s entire family had not survived and there was no hint of who was next of kin, the trio of suitors decided to perform the final rites themselves.
Normally at that point, the ashes would be scattered into a holy river like the Ganga. But for some reason, the Editor decided to preserve them in her home.
Like I said, the three gentlemen were most upset by Abhagya’s passing. But they hobbled on somewhat. The Editor returned to his job but from that point on only published tragic love poems. The Dean gave up his day job at the University and built a home near Abhagya’s old home. This was puzzling given the recently demonstrated danger from Snakes in that area. But he didn’t seem to mind. He set up his home exactly the way he would have had he built it for himself and Abhagya. He even managed to move Abhagya’s ashes into his new home, and he gave the ashes their own bedroom and everything. And if the University had offered a remote work option he’d have taken it.
The Travel agent decided to travel! Not just because he had a large inventory of tickets that would go to waste but because he felt he needed to see if there was a miracle that could heal him.
None of the three married or pursued any other romantic interests.
This was more or less their status for the next 5 years, going by their Instagram feeds.
If the editor had a new tragic poem posted, the Dean would post a new recipe that he was sure Abhagya would have loved, and the travel agent would post a new landscape that he would have enjoyed had Abhagya been on the trip with him.
It was on one such trip in a faraway land that the Travel agent was wandering when he ran out of daylight. He was too far from his hotel to attempt to reach it in the dark. So he sought shelter in a hut he saw in the distance.
This being ancient India, the family in the hut welcomed him with open arms. They laid out the best plates and treated him to a full 6-course dinner. At dinner, as was the custom back then, the head of the household dined with the guest, while his wife worked in the kitchen and their boy served them food.
The guest asked for salt at one point, and the little boy probably unable to tell the difference fetched him pepper. This enraged the host so much he picked up his boy and tossed him into the boiling pot of soup, killing him more or less instantly.
“Oh my god, what have you done!” exclaimed the Travel Agent.
“You think I should add some carrots too?” asked the host
“No. Your boy. Oh my god, this is too ghastly for words!”
“Relax, we do this about once a week. It’s good for him” said the host.
But the travel agent would not stay calm. So the host finally thought the only way to calm him was to do what he would have to do eventually anyway. He took out a box and opening it got out a very old-looking book. With one hand on the pot of soup, he muttered a few spells. And in a brilliant flash of light, the boy was standing right there, well and alive and smiling even. It’s like he had never even remembered anything. He did smell of soup though. But he was back!
This was the miracle that the Travel Agent needed. He didn’t say anything further but in the dead of night stole the book and escaped from that place as fast as his legs would carry him.
He made it back to the Dean and Abhagya’s ashes not too long after. Luckily, the Editor was also there, visiting the Dean over a cup of tea. The atmosphere was gloomy. But not for long as the Travel Agent began explaining everything.
“Oh, the tragedy of cruel fate. That a little boy should be subjected to such trauma” said the Editor morosely.
“Don’t you get it?” asked the Travel Agent. “I stole the book. I know the spells. We can bring her back.”
The light was starting to return to the Editor’s eyes. “Oh yes, using the ashes that I preserved” he said.
Quickly, they got the ashes, the travel agent read the spell and instantly Abhagya was brought back to life. Unlike the little boy who had been brought back, Abhagya did not smile. She screamed. Which is natural because she had been sleeping and now suddenly she was standing in a strange unfamiliar place with her portraits on the wall, and three men staring at her. Then memory came back slowly, she had seen these men briefly the evening before. Funny it seemed like it was years ago.
And then it turned out it was years ago. They caught her up to all that had happened. And ended that narrative by starting to quarrel amongst themselves.
The Editor asserted that he had had the presence of mind to preserve her remains so he deserved to marry her.
The Dean contended that he’d built a house for her and given up his profession.
The Travel agent countered that he deserved her hand, having helped to restore it, and the rest of her body and her soul, in the first place.
When they couldn’t out-argue each other they looked at her and asked her to choose.
Abhagya was still staring at them open-mouthed, reeling from their earlier casual remarks about her family’s demise and all the lost time.
“Everyone in my family is no more. I’ve lost 5 years of studying, traveling or flexing my literary skills and you expect me to choose one of you? Did I even ask to be brought back to such circumstances? Have you thought of how I’ll adapt back to life after having not lived for so many years? Why didn’t you just leave me alone”
“We would, but it was not our decision. The Betaal made us do it. Why do you care anyway? You’re just a made-up character in the Betaal’s story, same as us. Now just answer the question so we can all go back to our non-existence” said the Dean
“Oh alright” sighed Abhagya. Then carefully she said “I choose…..”
When there was just silence, Abhagya added “Psst, Pssst, Vik, that’s your cue. Whom did I choose?”
Vik looked thoughtful for a second. And then replied “I agree with Abhagya, she doesn’t have to choose anyone. She can go on with the things she wants to do. Picking a husband would be last on anyone’s list if they came back from the dead in tragic circumstances like that. But knowing what you’ll say – I’ll assume a choice has to be made and the three suitors are the same in all other aspects. In that case Abhagya should choose the Dean. The Editor didn’t really do much. He might have just been far too lazy to travel to the Ganga to disperse Abhagya’s ashes. The Travel Agent seemed to have gotten lucky. He was practically traveling the world, enjoying life. An Instagram post wishing Abhagya was there wasn’t a good enough demonstration of his love. And publishing tragic love poems isn’t any better either. The Dean gave up his profession, built a house for her and waited for 5 years doing nothing else.”
“Well this one’s a bit subjective,” said the Betaal “but like I learnt in Business School, there’s no single right answer to some of these questions. But in case you haven’t noticed, you’ve been talking all this while. So farewell!”. And with that the Betaal flew back to his tree.
Vik just shrugged and walked back to the tree to fetch him again.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The girl’s name, Abhagya, is a Hindi word meaning misfortune or ill-luck. This is fitting because pretty much at the beginning of the story the girl seems to have the worst kind of luck. And then she has to spend most of the rest of the story in an urn.
There’s also the usual element of threes here that we’ve found numerous times on this show.
The book to bring people back from the dead sounds like a useful thing. The trio of suitors, the Dean, the Editor and the Travel Agent didn’t think of more uses for it. Maybe if it worked on plant life they could have helped reverse deforestation and save the environment. Or bring back the woolly mammoth.
Check out the links in the show notes to the six Vikram and Betaal episodes we’ve done before:
Episode 5 – Kingly duties
Episode 8 – Vik and the Vampire Redux
Episode 32 – The Call of Duty
Episode 34 – A Damsel in Distress
Episode 56 – The Three Sherlocks
Episode 95 – Vikram-Betaal – The Blame Game is Afoot
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do a Kannada folk tale. This one is about a girl who never has to go to the florist. Because she can turn herself into a flowering tree