Today’s episode is a Bengali folk tale. It’s about a boy with the moon on his forehead, and his sister. It’s also not the dark side of the moon. a built-in headlamp on his forehead. It’s a longish story so we’ll need more than one episode to cover this.
Our story begins with a King. Let’s call him Bhola, which is the Hindi word for gullible. The reason for that will soon be clear.
King Bhola had only one worry. And it did not have anything to do with the pressures of running his Kingdom. Well, in a way it did. The King and his Queen didnt have any children. Bhola needed an heir whom he could train up and pass the administrative worries to, so he could retire to the quiet life.
After he’d had no luck for a while, he married again, much to the disapproval of his Queen, his first wife. And when that didn’t help either, he married again. He did this a few more times until he was left with 6 wives and still no children.
In trying to remedy the situation, he’d effectively made it worse. Domestic decisions were a lot harder to navigate with constant power struggles between the six queens. For that reason he preferred to be out hunting most of the time.
The Kingdom was effectively being neglected.
During one such hunt, the King approached a river for a much needed drink of water. But then he heard voices. There were girls bathing in the river. Bhola was the King, but he was definitely not a gentleman. He didnt quickly leave the scene and go upstream to quench his thirst. In fact his thirst for water had turned into thirst for something else.
He hid behind a rock and listened to what they were saying.
As it happens, they represented a cross section of the social and economic classes in his Kingdom. And as you can guess there were only 2 economic classes: the rich and the poor. But there were 4 social classes: the warriors, the merchants, the priesthood and the workers.
One of the girls was the daughter of the King’s Minister. The other was the daughter of a merchant. The third was the daughter of an elderly widow who gathered cow dung fresh from the source and sold it. No prizes for guessing which was the least glamorous profession.
Nevertheless, the 4 girls were together and that showed that despite having a King who was neglecting his duties, some things were going well in the Kingdom.
Cant say the same about respect for privacy though.
The King listened to all the boring stuff that first allowed him to distinguish between the voices. And then the conversation took an interesting turn. The four girls began talking about why they would make the ideal wife.
The minister’s daughter said she would make the ideal wife because her husband would never have to buy clothes for her. She had some magical ability because the clothes she wore would never soil, they would never lose their shine. Wear and tear wasnt a thing with her.
“Do you actually want that?” asked one girl surprised.
“Where’s the joy in not trying our new clothes?” asked another.
“Ewww!” remarked the fourth girl. “Even if they dont tear, the clothes must get smelly after a while”
“I have something better” said the Merchant’s daughter. “The gas I use for cooking will never run out! My husband will have an incredibly low utility bill”
“But you still have to do all the cooking!” said the daughter of the priest. “When I cook, the pot never runs out of food, no matter how many times I serve out of it. I’ve used this trick often at parties and people are always amazed how I managed to cook for so many people. The reality is that I’ve only ever cooked once in my life and everyday we’ve been eating out of the same pot”
“And eating the same food every single day?!” said the fourth girl. “You know we dont earn much as cow-dung collectors. But my mom and I do vary our food. Once a month, we even get to add salt to our rice”.
She paused and added “but seeing as you’ve all been loudly proclaiming your unique selling point to an imaginary eavesdropping bachelor, I suppose I must do that too.
Okay, my fortune is that I’m destined to give birth to a boy and a girl. The boy will have a moon on his forehead, and stars on his hands”
“Stars? Are those like Chickenpox or measles rashes? Why would you want a child like that?” asked one girl.
Another said “The moon on his forehead, huh? Is that a birthmark the shape of a crescent?” asked another, more sensible girl.
The Third said “What about the girl, what does she have?”
“Beauty, both internal and external” replied the cowdung-collector’s daughter.
The King had heard enough. He knew which one he wanted to marry.
He jumped out from behind the rock and declared, “I know which one of you I’m going to marry”
“Eeek” screamed the girls and threw rocks at him.
After much confusion and finally some intervention from the more mature-behaving Minister, Priest, Merchant and Cowdung collector, there was a shaky acceptance from the girls that there was a 1 in 4 chance that they would have to marry this madman.
King announced that the Cow-dung collector’s daughter was the girl for him. The other three breathed a huge sigh of relief. And truth be told, the cowdung collector’s daughter whom we shall call Gauri was not unhappy with the decision. Collecting cowdung was the worst profession but it was pretty far down in the list of things that will make your resume look good. It was almost as bad as scaring away crows and dogs in the marketplace.
Maybe Gauri would even have the resources to hire people to collect cowdung for her if she wanted to.
All she would have to tolerate would be a husband who might suddenly jump out from behind the curtains and shout peekaboo at the children after they were born. Maybe the kids would not get too frightened.
Despite this not having worked 6 times, Bhola for some reason was optimistic this time.
I mean, 7th time’s the charm right?
Bhola and Gauri had a grand wedding. Not to call the King too gullible, but maybe he shouldnt shouldn’t also have combined in a gender reveal party. He’d put up all those moon and stars decorations and announcing naming contests for his son and daughter who he was sure were going to be born, just because that’s what Gauri had found in a fortune cookie.
But as luck would have it, in a few months Gauri did share with Bhola that she was in fact expecting. The King was delighted, but not surprised.
The six other Queens who previously were in all kinds of disputes with each other were now united in their hatred of Gauri, and united in their remembrance of times when each of them was the most important Queen in the palace. Sure, they were still Queens who got to have lots of servants and all their wishes fulfilled, but each had lost something they valued a lot more: the King’s attention. They were constantly on the lookout for ways they could pay her back for the harm the King had caused them. Soon the opportunity presented itself.
The King had a campaign to launch. He knew he would have to be away for months. But he did not want to miss his children being born. So he did something innovative. He gave Gauri a magic bell and told her to ring it only when she was going into labor. He would return immediately no matter where he was. But she must be careful not to ring it when she didnt need him.
Gauri marveled at the beautiful bell and thanked him for it.
The King departed and not long after, the other 6 Queens ventured in to her chambers and made polite conversation. They did ask her what the King had given her. Gauri promptly described the mobile phone/pager/summoning charm she’d been given.
Queen no. 4 said, “Hah, that Bhola! Always the practical joker”
“I’m sorry what?” asked Gauri
“Yeah” chimed in Queen no 2. “He’s played that trick on me before. Told me that before going into Battle and when I rang the bell he jumped out from behind the curtain and had a good laugh at my expense”.
“Me too” added a couple more Queens.
Obviously Bhola had done no such thing. The Queens were trying to get Gauri into trouble.
But to Gauri what the Queens described simply reinforced a pattern she had expected from her first encounter with the King.
She kept thinking about this after the Queens left. Half-heartedly she rang the bell and was shocked to have the King shoot into her chambers instantly.
“I…. I….” she started to say, but couldnt find the words.
“You are not in labor” observed the King. “Didnt I specifically warn you not to call me? I was in the middle of a deuced difficult negotiation. And I’d just found the upper hand. I had to abandon all that and rush back here. This little maneouver is going to cost the Kingdom 30 years of economic growth”
After her calmed down, Bhola left again. With a strict warning not to ring the bell unless she was in labor.
That was a mistake. He should have given the ring to her doctor instead. Gauri’s doctor was employed by the King and she could be trusted to follow the orders of someone who was paying her salary.
After a while, the Queens again had a conversation with Gauri. Ringing the bell the first time had work, sure. But it must have been because the King was nearby at that time. I’m sure he’s hundreds of miles away by now. There’s no way it will work.
Gauri was tempted to try it a second time. But the King who was indeed hundreds of miles away did show up instantly.
Again he was angry. This time for having had to duck out of the King of the year awards. Kind of like the Oscars or Academy awards for Royalty. He was a strong contender, but now he did not even know who won. Or if he had won and they had to present the award to the second best King because he was absent.
Instead of giving the bell to Gauri’s Doctor at this point he instead just left, promising to not return even if she rang it.
She did ring it frantically because soon after she went into labor. But the King did not return. He thought she was crying wolf.
When he did return weeks later, the King was surprised to see his adorable little twins. Wait a minute! The boy had no moon on his forehead. And the girl was beautiful and all but she kept biting him. In fact, now that he looked closely, they were covered in fur all over, had a large wet nose and were wagging their tails. “Dogs?! He screamed. My children are little fox terriers? They’re adorable little fox terriers, but they cant rule the Kingdom!”
He summoned Gauri and without much of a trial banished her from the palace and punished her. She was going to be the bottom rung of society. She would be dressed in rags and scare crows and dogs from the marketplace. That was her job from now on.
Gauri tried to speak, but Bhola wouldn’t listen.
If he had heard, it wouldnt have helped anyway. Because Gauri wasnt much of an eyewitness to what had happened. She had passed out and when she woke up the adorable little puppies were next to her.
The reality was that the other 6 Queens had arranged this. They had engaged the midwife in their conspiracy. She took the two actual human babies that were born and replaced them with the puppies.
The babies were indeed a boy and a girl. And the boy definitely had a moon on his forehead and stars on his hands.
In the middle of the night, the midwife carried the boy and girl to deal with them.
While it was a dark night, the boy’s forehead and hands shone, providing a natural flashlight for her to use. This could come in handy she thought. But its not worth keeping him alive just for this. I’ll have to do what the Queens commanded. She took the children to the Potter’s house.
Not as a rescue mission. She knew the Potter and her husband usually left all the raw clay pots in the oven and fired up the oven in the morning. She carefully placed the babies inside the pots in the oven and quickly exited the scene. The Potter wouldn’t even realize until it was too late.
The midwife walked home, rubbing her hands in glee, but stumbling through the dark as she no longer had her human flashlight. She looked forward to collecting her reward from the Queens the next day. The prophecy about Gauri had been true enough. But here it ended. The King would never even know that he had had children.
We’ll leave it here for now. But seeing as this is a folk tale, this isnt much of a cliffhanger to leave it at. You get no prizes for guessing whether the babies survived.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll continue this story. We’ll find out how to get by on charm alone. And we’ll see why if a stranger wants to send you on a crazy quest to find something obscure that no one else heard of and for a reason that no one seems to understand, it might be a good idea to refuse.
A Big Milestone
I can’t believe its already been a whole year since I started this podcast! Thank you for your support and your feedback. It means a lot to me.
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I’ll see you next time!