In this episode, we’re back to Tenali Raman. We’ll do a story about this colorful character from the 16th century.
Tenali Raman was a court jester in King Krishnadevarayar’s court. He avoided a number of tricky situations and made a good pile of cash. Often it was the King that he was cheating out of the money. But he did not limit himself to fleecing the King. He did cheat the occasional common one as well.
Today’s story is a little different from the usual. We’ll see him cheat some Rishis. The only positive was that those Rishis were themselves out to cheat the King.
The story begins with King Krishnadevarayar one evening. The King had already had a long day. He glanced at his schedule which had started at 6 am with a Jog along his own private Lake and he had just finished a lengthy trade meeting with a bunch of foreigners. He was already in a terrible mood. He didn’t like conversing with foreign trade delegations – come to think of it, he didn’t even know which Kingdom they were from. They had spent 3 hours signaling to each other and all they had collectively agreed at the end of the meeting was how to say Hello in each other’s language.
The next day’s schedule showed 6 more hours of that tomorrow. He wouldn’t be able to handle it without the little entertainment provided by Tenali Raman during the commercial breaks. Thankful that his schedule was finally clear for the night, Krishnadevarayar decided to turn in. But things were about to take a turn for the worse. The King was going to have a long night.
Being the last to leave, he was just locking up the throne room when a messenger rushed to him breathlessly.
“Your majesty, an emergency, you need to go to the hospital right away!”
“The Hospital? What is it?” he asked anxiously
“It’s a great white building that people go to when they are ill, your majesty. But that’s not important right now. What’s happening now is that your mother is unwell”
The King hopped on the saddle and galloped his horse straight for the Hospital. Even though it was late night and there wasn’t much traffic, he used the medieval Indian version of a red revolving beacon and a siren. And that basically consisted of a second person following on horseback whose only job it also was to wave a lantern and imitate a siren.
And because that helper was keeping pace with the King’s horse, it’s understandable that by the time the King reached the hospital his ears were ringing.
He couldn’t believe he let his Minister of Transport talk him into this. Strobe lights and sirens were all the rage in other Kingdoms, he had been told. Tomorrow I’m going to make him travel with a siren – then he’ll know what it feels like.
At the hospital, the King asked the doctors how his mother was doing.
“She is very ill, your majesty,” one doctor said. “You may have to bid farewell to her soon”
“Why? Are visiting hours over?” asked the King clearly not reading between the lines.
“Err, I meant, her highness is getting ready for her journey to the great beyond” the doctor tried
“What rubbish! The lady is ill, how could she possibly be setting out on a journey. And you as her doctor didn’t prescribe rest?”
But the matter was finally explained to him. He rushed in to meet his mother.
She saw him and narrowed her eyes with suspicion. It seemed that she had a long internal debate before she finally explained what was on her mind. She began, “Son, you’ve been a disappointment all your life. First I had you when I wanted a girl. Next, you never got the grades I wanted. You didn’t learn to manage the Kingdom as your father did. And now I’ve been debating whether I should let you fulfill my last wish. Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll bungle it up. But what have I got to lose? So I’ll ask you in the hopes that your staff is not entirely incompetent. Before I pass away I would like to eat a Mango.”
That would have been the easiest wish to fulfill. If it had not been the middle of Spring. Given this was the medieval age, there were neither refrigerators nor sophisticated mechanisms to preserve Mangoes several months after the season was over.
Nevertheless, the King sent out all his soldiers in every direction. He also announced a big reward – the kind that would get mercenaries like Tenali Raman to pull a rabbit… I mean a mango out of his hat.
But Tenali wasn’t always as resourceful as everyone imagined him to be. Knowing full well that he would not be able to fetch his King a mango at this time of the year, he pretended not to be aware of the King’s quest for the fruit.
A day or two passed and still no mango. Krishnadevarayar’s mother breathed her last. But not before berating him one last time for having failed her yet again.
Her last words to him were “At the very least, don’t forget me.”
To a casual observer, her words meant that the King was not to forget that he had had a mother and the things he had done for him. But he didn’t want to leave something vital to chance, so he consulted with his psychologists. These were a group of rishis in the King’s employ. You could tell they were non-scientists from the very fact that they usually all agreed with each other.
They were unanimous now as well. Of course, the King’s mother did not want her son to forget her and her role in his upbringing. But that was not what she meant in her last words.
What she meant was her last wish about the mango that went unfulfilled.
The King thought something was off here. Firstly, his mother would have said “don’t forget my wish” or “don’t forget the mango”, but she had said, “don’t forget me”. Secondly, the mango was no longer her last wish. It was her second-to-last wish, supplanted at the top spot by her wish not to be forgotten. To fulfill her real last wish all he had to do was not forget her. Or so he thought. Maybe it was the emotions of the day, he did not raise these objections to his rishis. Who was he to challenge their wisdom? If you’re puzzled by that don’t be. Even the greatest of Kings considered their wisdom and analytical skills to be inferior to Rishis. It was built into their education system which was run by…. You guessed it…. Rishis.
So the King quietly accepted the Rishis’ interpretation of her last words. The solution, the Rishis said was to fulfill her wish indirectly. She had wanted a mango, so the solution was to distribute Mangoes to all the rishis. That would satisfy her soul.
“But it’s still Springtime. There are no mangoes yet” the King replied
“Your Majesty, we don’t mean real mangoes. We mean mangoes made out of solid gold” a Rishi said.
“What? Why out of Gold and not Silver? Or even wood? I’ve got excellent woodworkers, just the other day one of them carved an ordinary piece of wood into an extremely realistic pineapple”
“Sorry your majesty, but it has to be gold. According to the royal cook, your mom’s favorite mangoes were golden”
“The cook was obviously talking about a color and not material,” the King said.
“But to satisfy her soul it’s not a straightforward interpretation. If she had liked Kesar Mangoes we would have asked for saffron, if she had liked Totapuri mangoes, we’d have asked for a Parrot and a Puri each,” the Rishi responded, even though they totally would not have. They would have found a way to justify extracting gold from the King.
Tenali Raman had been easily extracting Gold from the King all the time. It was time others got in on that scheme.
The King agreed to the Rishis’ plan and commissioned his goldsmith to create dozens of Golden Mangoes. If the treasury ran dry, he could take Gold about the palace and melt it, but the mangoes were the priority now.
The news spread fast. The courtiers even began to see fittings in the courtroom disappear as more and more gold was melted to create the mangoes.
Tenali Raman was naturally worried. If all the gold was gone, how was he going to continue fleecing the King? No, he must put a stop to this.
He had an idea which he put into action right away. He invited the whole group of Rishis to his own home. Now it would have been impossible to pull the Rishis away when they were so keenly observing their golden mangoes being created. But Tenali used a little psychology. He indicated in the invitation letter that he was doing this to fulfill his own mother’s last wish.
Knowing that Tenali must have accumulated a lot of Gold over the years from the King, the greedy Rishis agreed and showed up at his doorstep at the appointed time.
“We’re sorry for your loss, Tenali,” said a Rishi opening the conversation
“Thank you. It was a long time ago” replied Tenali. “My mom had one last wish that I could not fulfill. It’s been eating me up all these years. But now your wisdom has shown me the way”
The Rishis were waiting for his next words, but Tenali was silent as he went about methodically locking all the doors and windows so there was no chance of escape.
He then walked to a corner of the room where a fire was going with a hot iron rod on it. He put on an oven mitt and picked it up. The Rishis were extremely nervous now when he approached them with it.
Tenali explained “My mother had rheumatoid arthritis. While she lay on her death bed her joints were hurting badly. And she asked me to apply this hot rod to them. Sorry that it seems brutal, but hey, it’s 16th-century medicine. I never got to apply this rod. By the time the rod was heated, she had passed away. But I admire you brave and wise men who are going to accept this to satisfy her soul”.
The next 30 minutes are too painful to describe. So let’s see what happened outside Tenali’s hut. The neighbors heard the Rishis’ screams and alerted the authorities. Respecting that this was the home of the Royal Jester, and the screams were identified as belonging to the Royal Astrologers/Psychologists, the King was alerted. This was a grave matter, and the King rushed to the scene of the crime. No one else had dared interfere and the screams were still continuing.
It was only when the King announced his presence that the door opened. The rishis rushed out screaming and shouting at Tenali.
Tenali calmly replied to the King’s question of what was going on “Oh your majesty, I’m just fulfilling my mother’s last wish”
“Your mother?! I didn’t know you had one” replied the King
“Everyone must have a mother, your majesty. You are probably just surprised that she has never been mentioned before on this podcast. Anyway, that’s beside the point. You’re wondering what’s going on. It’s simple. I’m trying to treat my mom’s arthritis”
“By hurting these poor Rishis? How will that help your mother? That makes no sense” the King said.
Tenali did not even have to respond, he just smiled as the light dawned on the King’s face.
“Oh I see,” the King replied. “I’ve answered my own question there, haven’t I? Just like hurting these rishis won’t help your mother’s soul, giving them those Golden mangoes is not going to help my mother’s soul either.”
Well, that was that. The King decided not to give away any golden mango to any of the Rishis.
It was still ultimately a win-win for mostly everyone.
The King did not go bankrupt. He did give one mango to Tenali because the Jester had helped him to see the light.
But Tenali didn’t get to keep most of it. He had to pay for the Rishis’ medical expenses, which after 30 minutes of arthritis treatment were quite significant. Still, he came out just ahead, but more importantly, was happy that the King’s treasury retained most of the Gold. It would be easier to keep extracting it from the King a little at a time.
But the King continued to employ the Rishis and continued to fund them. And the Rishis for their part learned to be more subtle when asking the King for grants in the future.
To them, the fact that the King had not punished them proved the effectiveness of the education system they had designed to prove their superiority.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
Tenali Raman though known for his wit was also a learned man. He was a great poet, and a polyglot – fluent in 8 languages. It’s a shame that he used his abilities to cheat people off of money.
We’ve seen him playing tricks on the King, the common people, and on one occasion even a goddess.
Here are links to previous Tenali Raman episodes:
Episode 61 – Weightlifting, Episode 19 – Surely you’re joking Mr. Raman, Episode 2 – Animal Hater 1, and Episode 3 – Animal Hater 2
Here’s also a link to a page that explains different mango varieties if you are interested
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll finally start on a new series that I’d been aiming to cover for a while. It’s the Singhasan Battisi or the 32 throne stories. There’s a link with the Vikram and Betaal stories, but we’ll discuss that next week.