In this episode, we’re doing a folk tale from South India. This one is from the Ancient Indian Kindom of the Pandya Dynasty. While that makes this a Tamil folk tale, the Pandya Kingdom included parts of Kerala and Sri Lanka as well. So let’d dive in.
Chandralekha was a young girl who lived in a village in Ancient India. I should explain a bit about her family first. Chandralekha’s mother, Muttumohana, was a dancer. And it may not have been the noblest of professions in Ancient India, but it did earn her everyone’s respect and favor.
Consider her the Taylor Swift of Ancient India. So everyone loved her! She always got discounts on her Grocery bill, or Restaurant check. And she would always get invited to the most exclusive parties.
So it was that when Chandralekha was old enough and ready to go to school – Muttumohana naturally assumed that Chandralekha’s fees would not be a big deal.
Now Ancient Indian schools were very different from those you might be familiar with. For one thing, a single teacher or Guru ran the entire school. And the Guru was the ultimate authority, to be obeyed no matter what. A second difference was that tuition fees were very different. No one paid fees upfront. And the Guru alone got to decide what the Guru Dakshina was. The system had obvious disadvantages. For example, after learning everything from the Guru, the student could theoretically sneak away without paying. Luckily we as a civilization have learned from that and created temporary authorizations on credit cards. A second disadvantage was that the Guru could literally ask for anything! Chandralekha was a victim of the latter.
Now Chandralekha was a bright student. And by bright I mean the kind who got straight As in school. Sorry but I have to distinguish. After all, the company I keep – you know, the Sun god Surya, the Moon God Chandra, the fire god Agni. They are bright in the literary sense of the word as well.
And after only a few years of learning, Chandralekha was ready to graduate.
On graduation day, Chandralekha was prepared. She had withdrawn funds from the education fund her mom had set up for her. And it was a generous amount, seeing as Muttumohana had practically no living expenses.
When Chandralekha stepped up onto the stage ready to exchange her diploma with the bag of money, she had a surprise in store.
Her Guru whom she thought of just a regular eccentric professor handed her her diploma with a goofy smile on his face. His son was on the stage with him. Suddenly the Guru’s minions, a bunch of Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants, unfurled a banner full of roses and hearts. She looked down at her diploma with a sickening feeling. “Will you marry me?” it said.
She was shocked as her Guru’s son got down on one knee and repeated the question.
“Stop, stop!” she said, now annoyed. “Just hand me my diploma and I’ll be on my way”
Now annoyed that he was losing face in front of such a large crowd the Guru said. “I don’t have a Diploma for you.”
“What?! Why did I go to school all these years then?”
“To be with my son” said the Guru, trying once more. “It was fate” he added
“Confound you and your son. Just give me a Diploma, take your Guru dakshina, and promise me never to try to contact me again!” she said, now very annoyed.
The mention of Guru dakshina, or Tuition Fees, got the Guru thinking. “Yes, your Guru Dakshina. The arbitrary tuition fees that I have complete power to set, and with no fear of being countered by any appeals on ethical grounds. Ah yes. So I have decided. It’s nothing. I see you have a bag of money there – but you won’t have to give me that. All you need is to accept something from my son. This engagement ring!”
Chandralekha had had it at this point. She stormed off home.
Muttumohana had gotten a graduation cake, and balloons. But she saw her daughter’s expressiom.
“What’s the matter dear?” she asked.
But Chandralekha couldn’t tell her the truth. “I failed my exams” she said. “And I can’t retake them. I got expelled too”. She clutched her eyes and braced for the impact.
“Well, dear that’s great” said her mother.
“Wait, what?” Chandralekha asked
“Of course dear. Now I won’t have to lie to the world anymore. I was dreading having to admit that you are a graduate. I mean this is ancient india afer all. People would have been shocked, and refuse to socialize with us”
As it happens, Muttumohana’s joy was short lived.
The Guru, who had not taken his son’s rejection gracefully, was going about spreading rumors about Chandralekha.
She had gone crazy! He told everyone. She was acting weird, hadn’t people noticed? It all started the day she flunked school and refused to follow his orders.
“What’s that you said?” the grocer asked. “She refused to obey her Guru? That is crazy indeed. Now that you mention it, she has been acting differently. The other day, I passed her walking on the street. She’s right-handed but that day she was holding a book in her left hand. And guess what? The book was about a Russian cow. Doesn’t that suggest something?”
“It does indeed,” said the Guru, even though it actually didn’t. “Why don’t you explain so I’ll know if you’ve gotten it right”
The grocer continued “Gu is short for a cow. Ru is short for Russian, it’s that country’s internet domain shortcode. She’s conjuring a spell or something against her Guru. Against you!”
“Bingo!” thought the Guru. Spreading conspiracy theories was easier than he thought.
These theories spread like wildfire and grew into gigantic proportion. When Chandralekha visited the Grocery story next time, the grocer refused to serve someone who had fired space lasers into our farms and caused that awful fire last week. He also blamed Chandralekha for his mail getting delayed, his shoes getting worn out, his pantry getting overrun by mice and his roof leaking during the thunderstorm last week.
These UAnons as the Guru’s conspiracy theorists called themselves communicated amongst each other via message boards and fireside chats – the social media of Ancient India. Chandralekha lurked in the background and soon figured out what she wanted to know about these conspiracy theories.
She explained her plan to Muttumohana. “These conspiracy nuts genuinely seem to think that there is a way for me to rid myself of my inner demon. All I have to do is to go to the Temple near the Crematorium alone at midnight and do a little ritual there”
So that very night, Chandralekha headed for the Temple with the ingredients for a prayer. You know, fruits, flowers, a coconut, incense sticks all neatly arranged on an elaborate tray. She was sure to walk through the busiest part of the village – the equivalent of Times Square where a few people were always around regardless of the hour. She was careful to ask more than one person for directions to the Temple, even though she did not need to.
People stared at her in hope and wonder. She was actually going to do it! They thought. They were going to have their old Chandralekha back soon! To be honest it was a relief. Spotting the differences between the crazy Chandralekha and the normal Chandralekha was an incredibly hard task.
Chandralekha got to the temple soon no problem. First, she smashed the coconut. And just in case someone was spying on her, she did in fact say a prayer. Then she began planting evidence of her having been there. She “accidentally” dropped her scarf which was clearly labeled “property of Chandralekha. If found, return to…” followed by her address. She also rearranged her hair and accidentally lost a hair clip.
Job well done she thought and was turning around to head home. And then she heard noises. Hoofbeats. Quickly she hid behind some trees and watched. It was a good thing she did because the 8 horsemen who showed up were bandits. You might think Chandralekha was judging hastily, but no they couldn’t have been anything else. They were wearing masks, carrying burglary tools and gold and jewelry that was obviously incongruent with their dirty appearance.
Chandralekha carefully watched what they did, and listened with rapt attention.
“Let’s quickly bury the loot and be off” one of them said. “There’s a cricket match on and if we’re lucky we’ll get to watch the second innings”
Another thief, who seemed to be the chief announced “First things first, brothers. It’s Kannakol time”
Chandralekha gasped. She had heard rumors of a Kannakol. It was a magical stick. Rumor had it, it was created by lightning hitting a pile of cow dung. Somehow that transformed the pile into a stick that was harder and tougher than everything. It could be used to break walls and dig holes. And it had ears! By that I mean it had a voice-activated mechanism to obey its master’s commands. Like Alexa or Google Home or Siri.
The chief whispered something to the stick and it flew out of his hands, straight for her. The thieves went about digging, completely ignoring the Kannakol. It attacked the girl, who fought back a scream and fought back the Kannakol too. After a silent struggle, she finally managed to overpower the Kannkol. She peered through the trees just in time to see the thieves cover a hole in the ground and ride off into the darkness.
She didn’t understand why they hadn’t bothered to retrieve the Kannakol. How could they just forget their magic tool?
She made straight for the place they had been digging. Quickly, she dug up that spot, with just her plate, proving yet again that a person worried about their life can accomplish more with imperfect tools than 8 people trying the same task with proper tools when at stake for them was just the second half of a cricket match.
Chandralekha uncovered 4 boxes – full of Gold and Silver and Jewelry. She rushed home with the boxes.
Chandralekha cleaned up and told her mother everything. They decided the best thing to do was to lie low for a while. The village message boards seemed stunned that Chandralekha had actually gone and done the ritual. Some disputed that it had actually happened, claiming it was a move in 4-dimensional chess as they called it. But most had accepted that she was now “cured”.
Muttumohana’s highest priority though was her daughter’s injuries from the stick. So she sent out a maid to fetch some medicine.
Meanwhile, the thieves had discovered what had happened. Their chief finally remembering his Kannakol, retrieved it from the clump of trees near the temple. He saw bloodstains on it – so that meant it had found someone last night. He decided he would go into the village and pretend to be a doctor who could heal anything. Whoever got hurt would be seeking a doctor this morning, he figured.
“Unless the intruder was a doctor themselves,” said one thief, but was quickly ignored.
Another thief who had wandered off called out to his colleagues. “Here! I know who was here – look at this scarf. Her name is Chandralekha. And we have an address too.”
But the misogynist chief shot down that theory right away. “A girl? How could she have survived the Kannakol? No, the scarf was probably blown here in the wind. But give it to me anyway, I’ll take it with me just in case”
The chief put on a doctor’s disguise, complete with a fake stethoscope. Luckily for him, he ran into Muttumohana’s maid. When asked, he refused to just sell her the ointment. He wasn’t a pharmacist but a doctor! He was going to treat the patient whoever he was.
“She.” corrected the maid. “The patient is a She, not a He”
The doctor immediately regretted his words. If it was a girl, it couldn’t be the intruder, he told himself. He would be wasting his time, but he would have to follow through.
At Chandralekha’s house he did spot his 4 boxes under her bed. But he still didn’t connect the dots. “Those are nice boxes. I have very similar-looking boxes too. And mine look dirty just like those. Did you get yours at Big Bazaar?” he asked making polite conversation.
He applied some ointment on her bruises and was ready to leave but something was bothering him. The address of the house he was in seemed familiar. Now, where had he heard it before? He asked himself.
“Is that my scarf in your pocket?” asked Chandralekha.
The truth hit him then. But in a brilliant recovery, he quickly pulled it out. “Why it must be. That’s why the address seemed familiar. I found this on my way into the village this morning. Thought I’d return it to the rightful owner”
The truth did hit him finally though. Chandralekha was the intruder from last night. He was surprised but confronted by facts and circumstantial evidence, he had to accept it. At least in that respect, he was better than the UAnon conspiracy theorists.
He rushed off back to base. But Chandralekha was doing some thinking of her own. The doctor had seemed familiar somewhat. And now she remembered. He was the chief of the thieves from last night. What’s more – the ointment wasn’t working. And this guy had no idea what the going price of medicine was. He was not a real doctor if he wasn’t charging his patients an arm and a leg for every little thing.
Chandralekha knew the thieves would be back tonight for the boxes.
So she swapped out the gold and put in rocks and sand.
Just as she anticipated, the thieves broke into her room in the night. She didn’t move a muscle. To her disappointment, the thieves decided to get the boxes first and come back the next day for the girl. The thieves made off with the boxes. If they had only bothered to peek inside the boxes they could have avoided an extra day, avoided an extra frustration, and would have saved you, listeners, a minute in this already long story.
But they did come back the next day. Angrier for having been deceived. To avoid waking up the girl who could cause a commotion, instead of simply gagging her they decided to carry her bed with her still sleeping in it. Now if they had heard Episode 63 – Kill with a BillHook: The Bride’s Revenge! they would not have tried that.
Anyway, they did. Now as they were passing through the mango grove to their hideout, Chandralekha managed to pluck a bunch of mangos from the branches she was passing by. And at a convenient point when there were enough mangoes managed to slip off the bed and into a mango tree. Now that’s what the story says. But whoever created this story lacked education in basic physics. They were carrying the bed with her in it. You’d think they’d notice when it suddenly became lighter when she hopped off.
Anyway, the thieves were shocked that the girl they had definitely seen sleeping in the bed had turned into a pile of mangoes.
She’s a witch they decided. She can turn gold and jewels into rocks and herself into mangoes.
“Why don’t we just eat all these mangoes?” said one. “Then she can’t turn back.”
An excellent idea said the others and they all immediately fell upon the mangoes.
Unfortunately, they did discover that Chandralekha was very much alive. They saw a poster. The mother-daughter dance duo. Chandralekha had followed Muttumohana in her profession.
“That’s it!” said the chief. “We’ll set a trap for her”.
They called Chandralekha’s agent and arranged a performance at this private party they were hosting. Only 8 guests, but they would pay handsomely.
When Chandralekha heard about this engagement, she knew right away this must be the Thieves. She did something she should have done at the very beginning of the story. She went to the palace. The Prince was sympathetic. He heard the whole story from Chandralekha and readily granted her wish. She needed 8 of his toughest soldiers disguised as musicians to accompany Chandralekha and Muttumohana. The prince would get all the credit and the book rights and the exclusive media interviews. Chandralekha just wanted the thieves behind bars. It wasn’t that she was scared of them. But having to repair her bedroom wall so often was a bit inconvenient.
So Chandralekha, her mother and the fake musicians reached the party at the appointed date and time. The thieves were taken aback at the very strong looking “musicians”. They had expected just a couple of ladies. And 8 vs 2 were good enough odds for them, even if one of the two was Chandralekha. But now, they dared not make the first move.
Chandralekha who had confirmed that her hosts were indeed the thieves did make the first move. She nodded to the musicians. At that signal from her, they got out their badges and guns and arrested the thieves on the spot, and began reading them their wrongs. This was ancient India – a suspected criminal had no rights. And besides, it does makes sense to read the wrongs rather than rights.
That’s the end of the story. The original tale had Chandralekha marrying the prince. But I left that part out because that part seemed completely arbitrary. It’s not the Prince who had proved himself worthy of Chandralekha or anything. He’d rubber-stamped her plan to arrest these thieves that had been plaguing the Kingdom for years. He’d gladly taken all the credit and the book and merchandise rights. He had nothing to offer her in return other than a title. So let’s just say that he proposed marriage but that she rejected him.
That’s all for now
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, by special listener request, we’ll cover the story of Parshuram. Parshuram is one of the avatars of Vishnu. And like me, he’s eternal. We’ll cover a couple of lesser-known incidents in his life. We’ll leave the most well-known parts for later when we get to those sections of other stories, including the Mahabharat