This week, we’ll do a folk tale from Madhya Pradesh, about a magic cow that makes gold every time it goes to the bathroom and a bowl that can make any food appear
The character this week is someone whom we’ve encountered a lot on this podcast. It’s my dad! Brahma the creator
Our story begins on a farm, where a lazy man lived with his wife.
And by lazy I mean a real extreme version of lazy. The man did nothing, his wife was the real farmer. All day long she worked hard in the fields while her husband slept. He always had a convenient excuse – if it was an ingrowing toenail on Monday, it was a headache on Tuesday. The wife realized after a while that there was just no way to get work out of this guy. She resigned to her fate and continued her 7 days a week routine in the fields.
One day as she was about to head out, she had some grain spread out on a mat in the sun, all prepared to be dried out in the warm sunshine.
Her husband was lying on his bed counting sheep. Metaphorically. They were no real sheep on this farm.
As she was about to head out, she saw a flock of birds that were eyeing all the grain, mouths drooling. She knew the moment she exited the scene, the birds would soon be on the grain. And the sun-dried grain was for a very important client. The farmer and her husband literally depended on this income for their next meal. And yet, the fields could not be left unattended.
She wasn’t looking forward to it, but the only way out for her to entrust her husband with the task of minding the grain. She woke her husband up and gave him the all-important task. Watch the grain! Sensing the loophole her husband was thinking about, she quickly added – “And by “watch”, I really mean “mind”. If you see any birds scare them away. You can do that much. Literally, the grain is like 3 feet away from you. Even if you move a little bit the birds are going to be scared away. Now goodbye” she said and left for the fields.
There is a quote often misattributed to Bill Gates “I will always find a lazy person to do a difficult job because they’ll find the easiest way to do it”. Well that didn’t really apply to the farmer’s husband.
“If I see any birds I’m to scare them away” thought the husband. “If…. “if” is good!” he thought.
And promptly dropped off to sleep. Within 5 minutes, of course, the birds had swooped down and began feasting on the grain. They made quite a racket of course. But the husband was fast asleep already.
When his wife, the farmer, returned that evening back to her sleeping husband and the now-empty mat, she was obviously very angry and disappointed. There was nothing to be done however – so she scolded her very irresponsible husband.
The next morning, she spread the grain out again. This time, the husband felt a little guilty. He decided he must do something about the birds. He was already starting to feel sleepy. Then he had a brilliant idea. At least he thought it was a brilliant idea. He spread lots of glue all over the grain. His mind at rest, he dozed off again. When his wife returned, yes the grain was still there, but guess what so were all the birds. They were all stuck to the mat and making quite a racket. But her husband’s snores were louder than all of the squawking of the birds.
She shook her husband awake and he was about to celebrate, but his wife was glaring at him.
“Oh congratulations” she muttered. “A fine job! How exactly are we supposed to get the glue off of the grain now?”
Thinking quickly, the man said “We’ve caught all the birds – we could just sell them all”
The wife replied “What a silly – hey, wait a minute what if we sold the birds? We could get a pretty decent amount for all these birds. Thank goodness at least I have brains in this family”
“Umm,” said the husband
“My point exactly, now get the net”
“Wait, we have a net?” asked the husband “we could have just used it as a tent to cover the grain and protect it from the birds”
“Oh well,” said the wife and went to grab the birds. But just as she was reaching her hand towards the largest of the birds, it spoke back to her!
“Wait wait, don’t sell us! Let us go!”
“A bird that can talk, I really have been working too long in the Sun” said the wife.
“No, I heard it too” said the husband. “Alright bird why should we let you go?” he asked
“I am the king of the birds. I can be of use to you!”
“Too vague, I want something specific” replied the husband
“Ok, come see me tomorrow in the forest nearby and I’ll get you a magical gift” said the King of the birds, handing the farmer’s husband a gift card.
The bird King’s words were good enough for the husband and he began to let the birds go.
“Remember, redeem this fabulous gift offer within 7 days!” said the King as he flew off.
The wife had no expectation of anything good coming out of this, but whatever it was too late now.
“If it had magic why didn’t it free itself?” the wife asked the husband.
Meanwhile the husband wondered – “Where did the little credit card-sized bird pull a credit card sized gift card from?”
The next morning, no more grain was laid out to dry. Because when the farmer went to the fields, her husband went to the forest. Now it’s hard to imagine navigating a forest and randomly stumbling on the birds from the day before, but that’s exactly what happened.
The bird was happy to present the farmer’s husband with…. a cow!
“Oh thank you” said the farmer. “Glad its not just magic beans. But what’s so magical about a cow?”
“You’ll find out soon enough” said the King of the birds.
“You’re so tiny the cow is so big. How exactly was this cow yours to begin with?” He asked.
“Never you mind” said the bird. “And remember you get 30-days of technical support with the cow”
“Okay” said the man and walked away with the cow. Soon after, as they were walking, the cow had to go to the bathroom. But suddenly the man noticed that the cow dung was incredibly shiny. In fact, it was pure gold! Oh my! This was quite a cow!
He had no hesitation in scooping up the cow-dung into a bag he was carrying.
The cow made a bit more gold dung on the way, all of which the farmer scooped up.
But it was heavy work carrying the heavy gold. He didn’t think to put it on the cow itself. He was tired, and it’d been a whole 2 hours since he’d woken up. You couldn’t expect him to stay awake, could you?
He happened to near his daughter’s village. So he decided to stop there for a quick power nap.
He met his daughter and showed her the wonderful cow. The daughter did not have the best of intentions. While her father slept. She switched his cow for one of her own that looked quite similar.
The farmer’s husband woke up and started on his way. But first, he gifted all the gold in his bag to his daughter. No. That did not arouse any guilt in the girl.
When he reached home and showed his wife the cow, the wife was a little disappointed. “What’s magical about it?” She asked
“Wait and watch” he said. Just then the cow relieved herself.
“What’s so magical about this smelly pile of dung?” asked the wife as the husband stared at it dumbfounded.
“Something’s gone wrong” he said. “Oh well, the King of the birds told me there’s a 30 day technical support period. I’m taking the cow back there”.
He did. The King of the birds was surprised that the cow wasn’t functioning. He instead gave the farmer’s husband a bowl and a spoon. Again, the farmer’s husband couldn’t see where exactly the tiny creature had pulled a bowl several times its size.
“I have a set at home already” he told the bird.
“This is different” said the bird King. “Just pour water in it and stir it with the spoon. Imagine any food, and it will magically appear”.
“I want to try it,” thought the farmer’s husband. He poured in water and stirred it with the spoon, wishing for a big chocolate cake and voila! There was now a big chocolate cake in the bowl.
“This is perfect,” he thought! “I can take care of the cooking at home, while my wife is out in the fields”.
As he made his way home, the same thing happened as before. He decided to take a power nap at his daughter’s. Again, he showed his daughter the magic of the bowl. And again, she switched it out for an ordinary bowl as her father slept.
This time though, the King of the birds had sent a spy to follow the husband home. The spy saw the daughter switch the bowls. He promptly reported everything back to his King.
Meanwhile the farmer’s husband reached his home and again, the same thing happened again. The farmer was surprised that her husband was trying to pass off just plain old tap water as strawberry shortcake.
The husband returned to the King of the birds the next day and this time the King gave him a length of rope and a stick. “What’s so magical about it?”
“You’ll see” said the King.
Again, he stopped for a power nap at his daughter’s home. This time though, the man couldn’t tell his daughter what the rope and stick were supposed to do.
“I’m sure they are magical” thought the daughter. “I’d better switch them anyway” she thought. And as her father slept she was about to grab the rope. But the moment she touched it, the rope coiled itself around her and the stick began to beat her. She howled with pain and her father woke up, not understanding anything. The stick continued to hit her, and the rope was so tight around her that her father couldn’t do anything to help.
She finally screamed that she would return her father’s gifts. The moment she said that the stick stopped and the rope came loose.
Her father finally understood what had happened. The daughter was finally remorseful and did, in fact, return the magic cow and the magic bowl.
Forgiving his daughter, as parents are prone to do, and armed with all his gifts, he went home.
This time you bet his wife was happy. She didn’t have to work in a field anymore. But they remembered their friend, the King of the birds, and they would lay out a lot of grain every day. Never once wondering why a creature with so much magic at his command was compelled to eat ordinary grain off of risky places of human habitation.
That’s it for now.
Show Notes
This is a folk tale from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. There are many tales from this part of the country, and we might cover them in future episodes.
There is also the element of “three”s here, an often recurring theme in most folk tales and fairy tales all over the world.
The story begins with a familiar theme of a supposedly helpless creature promising to help out someone who’s in a significant position of power over them. There’s a similar situation with the Lion and Mouse story from Aesop’s fables. And also, many European folk tales.
The characters in this story are atypical. The wife does all of the hard work. In the original story the man was called the farmer and his wife was simply called the farmer’s wife, but that’s absolute nonsense. It’s the wife who does all the work, so I’ve rightfully designated her the farmer, and the man is the farmer’s husband.
The daughter is dishonest with her own father. And that’s something you don’t see often in these folk tales unless there’s also another and an equally offsetting good daughter.
The Character of the Week
The character this week is someone whom we’ve encountered a lot on this podcast. It’s my dad! Brahma the creator.
Brahma was created by himself! Not for nothing do we call him the “creator”! So you could say my father can trace his ancestry all the way back to himself!
The story goes that in the beginning there was only water everywhere. Brahma who somehow miraculously seems to exist at this point created an egg in the water. And from this egg emerged Brahma! Sounds a little paradoxical? Well, you’re not the first to think that. This is a bit like how Skynet was created from the very first Terminator in the Terminator movies!
Brahma took half the egg and made the Earth out of it. And he took the other half and made the heavens. So if you’ve looked up at the sky and wondered how the earth and sky seem to be the insides of two halves of a giant egg, you’re spot on!
There are many stories of Brahma – including one which explains why he has four heads. The story goes that once he created Shatarupa and really really liked her. But instead of you know asking for her phone number or Instagram handle, he just looked at her from a distance, facing her. When she moved sideways, he couldn’t be bothered to turn and look at her again. Instead, he did what was perfectly natural for the master of creation. He created himself an extra head. Pretty soon as she moved further, he had created two more heads and sat comfortably knowing she was fully in sight. When she tried to leap over him, he even created a fifth head looking upwards. Shiva had to intervene and chop off one of the heads to sort of warn him off of you know staring at Shatarupa and making her uncomfortable.
Another tale of Brahma has him traveling to another dimension and encountering many other Brahmas from other Universes – exactly like “Spiderman: Into the SpiderVerse”
There’s a special reason I’ve chosen Brahma this week. Gudi Padwa or Ugadi is a festival that will be celebrated in many parts of the country this Wednesday. This festival is the start of the Hindu new year. It’s also believed that this is the anniversary of the day that Brahma created the Universe, the day he hatched the egg with himself inside.
So, happy creation anniversary to y’all!
That’s it for this week.
Next Week
Given that in the following week, there’s the birthday of Ram, I thought we’d go back into the Ramayana. We won’t meet Ram but we’ll talk about two events his father Dasharath was involved in that had a big impact on Ram’s life. We’ll see why it’s a good idea to wear a protective orange vest when walking in a hunting zone. We’ll also see that if you make unconditional promises to someone, make sure their servants are not selfish.
The character next week is a wolf, who is excellent at tracking down stolen cows. And who taught humans that cows can be a good source of milk and butter!
I’ll see you next week!