In this episode, we’re continuing the folk tale from the last episode. One of my listeners had requested that we do a story from the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, so this is it!
If you’re not familiar with the “Hansel and Gretel” story from the Brothers Grimm – the one-line summary is this. After being cast out into the dark forest by their starving parents, a brother and sister find a house made of candy and they kill its witch owner who’s trying to kill them.
The story so far(previous episode: Episode 71 – The Five Gretels – Part 1) is that there were 5 girls who were ill-treated by their evil stepmother, including giving them a single grain of rice to divide amongst themselves. Their father abandoned them in the forest and they thought he drowned in the river. The girls found a nice little cottage which had a very harmless looking old lady, who offered them every kind of hospitality. That old lady Daayan had ulterior motives of course.
So we’ll continue the story about here.
After the sisters had a good night’s sleep Daayan told them the next morning that they must go into the woods and look for fruits and berries and stuff. It would take them a good couple of hours. She packed picnic lunches for them and giant slices of cake – meant to fatten them up. She only asked for one thing. That one of them would stay back with her to keep an old woman some company.
“Seriously?” thought Bhooki. “You’ve been living alone all the time. Aren’t you used to it by now?” But Tyagi readily agreed to stay back.
The other 4 girls walked into the forest with baskets and packed lunches and had a great time picking fruits and berries.
When they returned, Daayan was sitting alone and there was no sign of Tyagi.
“Oh she told me she wanted to go back to her stepmom,” said Daayan. She burped and excused herself.
For some reason, the other 4 girls bought the story.
The next three days were a repeat of the first. The surviving girls went to the forest while one stayed back. And always when they returned there was no sign of her. And Daayan who looked plumper by the day kept assuring the remaining girls that yet another sister had decided to return home.
In the children’s nursery rhyme where mother duck called out quack quack quack and all of the 5 little ducks came back. But in this one, they would never come back. That’s what Bhooki discovered.
On the 5th day, she was the only one remaining. Daayan told her to hang back and skip the fruit gathering. She said to go eat some more of that delicious strawberry shortcake from last night.
“At 8 in the morning?” asked Bhooki shocked
“Fine, go cut some vegetables for lunch or something. I’m going to go have a quick bath,” said Daayan and hurried off.
Bhooki cut some onions and then began looking around for potatoes. She found one basket in the corner, but when she opened it, she was shocked to find 4 heads. That’s all that remained of her sisters. But because this was an enchanted house and Daayan was a witch, the heads could talk!
The sisters’ heads were actually happy that Bhooki would soon join them.
“What rot! I’m going to fight my way out of this” said Bhooki. “I’m just going to run away!”
“You can’t. She’ll catch you. She’s a witch and she can fly” said Tyagi’s head.
“But she doesn’t have any wings! Wait a minute, I’ve got it! I’m going to take with me every possible object she might possibly use to fly with. Then she won’t be able to catch me!”
“Great idea!” said an unnamed and indistinct middle sister “Hurry though. She might be done with her bath soon. This is about the time she took yesterday”
Bhooki grabbed everything that she thought a witch might use to fly around. A cauldron, the bookcase, the sofa, the television set, the table, the chair, the exercise bicycle. She grabbed them all and ran out of the house. At this point, you’re probably thinking that if Bhooki could carry all of that, she was probably a Captain Marvel or Supergirl-caliber superhero who could handle a witch with her hands tied behind her back. But this is fiction. Let’s give the authors lots of leeways here.
Besides Bhooki couldn’t carry the weight very far. She resorted to throwing all the objects in all directions. Off a cliff, into the river.
Meanwhile, Daayan who was done with her bath, walked into the kitchen to find her lunch was missing! And the basket with the heads was open, meaning the girl had figured out what was going on here. Also missing were various objects around the house. Maybe Bhooki was really just a burglar pretending to be a traveler? Never mind, she would soon catch up with the girl.
After all, Bhooki hadn’t taken her mode of transport. She walked up to the wall where her broomstick was parked. She entered the key into the handle, kick-started it, and zoomed out of the window.
The objects Bhooki had scattered all over the mountainside were a bit of a distraction. And Daayan had to go pick up every piece of furniture and appliance and restore them to her home before finally pursuing the girl herself. The extra trips had been worth it, Daayan thought. Ikea charged a ridiculous delivery fee if she really decided to replace everything instead.
She finally saw the girl. By now, Bhooki was too tired from all the running. And eating all those desserts had not done much for her endurance. She saw Daayan flying towards her on a broomstick. “Who could have thought of that? A witch flying on a broomstick?!” she thought, while her sisters’ heads in the basket rolled their eyes.
Bhooki had reached a Peepal tree. And begged it to please hide her. It may seem like a sign of mental fatigue that she was talking to Trees. But it was a good decision. Because the tree opened up, let her in, and closed up again.
Daayan arrived on the scene and tried every possible charm but could not get the tree to give up the girl. Frustrated, she walked away.
What a witch with phenomenal semi-cosmic magic powers could not accomplish, the next day a simple woodcutter was about to. This was a different woodcutter, not Bhooki’s dad, Lakha. He walked up to the tree and was about to get started with his ax. But a voice spoke to him clearly. You can cut at the bottom, or the top. But not in the middle. Or you might cut me in half.
The peepal tree rolled its metaphorical eyes at the girl. Sure! I rescue you from the evil witch, and you are telling this woodcutter to cut me and not you?
This shocked the woodcutter. He escalated this up to his management chain until it reached the ears of the King himself. The King, together with his entire court went to observe the strange phenomenon of the talking tree.
Even David Copperfield, P.C. Sorcar, and a few other illusion artists were on the sidelines making notes for their next act.
After the King gave the go-ahead, the woodcutter did cut the tree. At the bottom and the top. And that allowed the girl to slide out of the center. Where she’d been hiding. It may seem remarkable that she survived without air and food and water inside the tree, but then she was used to living on just 2/5ths of a grain of rice.
After the King had heard her story, he suggested that she would make a good Queen. His Queen.
“What? Is that the only thing you can think of to say?” asked Bhooki. “How about punishing my evil stepmom? How about finding Daayan and putting her in prison?”
“Oh yeah, about that. I think you’re just mistaken. That’s all. I had some people check on those houses. At the address where you claimed to live, there is a couple living there not a recently widowed lady. So that can’t be your evil stepmom. She must have moved on without a forwarding address. And the witch is nowhere to be found where you said. I sent soldiers, but they haven’t found a witch. Just a nice bakeshop and its elderly proprietor”.
Bhooki shook her head. With this bozo as the King, the Kingdom was going to need a lot of help. She would have to be the one to provide it. She accepted his proposal.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
As usual, I’ve used names that indicate the roles the characters played. Bhooki is the Hindi word for hungry. Tyagi indicates someone who sacrifices, as the girl did in giving her share to Bhooki. Daayan means witch.
The story is very different from Hansel and Gretel of course. For one, Hansel and Gretel were actually not ill-treated at home. And it was their parents’ decision to leave them in the forest where they might have a chance of survival as opposed to certain starvation at home.
Why Daayan doesn’t straight away take on Bhooki after eating the third middle sister is a bit of a mystery. She had no reason to keep the ruse going.
The big difference however is that the witch survives in today’s story, whereas in the Grimm fairy tale, Gretel tricks her and traps her in her own oven.
The parents in today’s story? It’s unclear what they did. But it’s unlikely the evil stepmom did much in the way of household chores after the girls left.
Hansel himself does make it out, but Bhooki’s 4 sisters all perished. Although if you stumble into Daayan’s bakeshop and you should happen to be in the kitchen and open the wicker basket in the corner, they might just say hello to you!
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do an Akbar and Birbal story again, as some of you have requested. We’ll see how Birbal handles Q&A time in Emperor Akbar’s court. Spoiler alert: he cleverly answers questions that no one else can