Episode 9 – A clever Minister in King Akbar’s court

This week we’ll dive into the world of Akbar and Birbal. Where you’ll learn why you should always charge your phone before you head out on long trips, and you’ll learn about the very first method actor. You’ll also see why you should choose your words carefully when you’re rushing into a burning house.

The character this week is a boar that can change size and ghat can swim. If your reaction to that is yeah sure, that’ll happen when pigs fly- you are right because this boar can fly too.

Now on to the show 

Akbar was the Emporer of 16th century India. Like most rulers we have met in this podcast, he was a fair king but unlike most of those kings, Akbar did have occasional eccentricities. More on that later.

We’ll start off before Birbal was Birbal.

Emporer Akbar had become ruler of India when he was just 13 years old. Instead of hanging out at movie theaters and playing video games at the arcade, he was instead running a country.

And because he was running the country, he got to decide what his friends did as well. If he wasn’t going to have fun they weren’t either.

So his friends would often have to be “delighted” to accompany Akbar on his hunting trips. On one such trip they strayed quite a ways away from the regular path. And as happens in these situations their phone batteries died so they couldn’t get a handle on where they were. 

“I need a horse and saddle with an inbuilt charger next time”, thought Akbar “in fact I’ll email the stable boy right now” and then he looked at his dead phone and groaned.

And to top it all they were thirsty.

“We could just ask that boy for water” said one of Akbar’s hostages, I mean friends.

Akbar looked up and saw the boy – he seemed bright but was also deliberately ignoring how richly the hunting party was dressed.

They all did ask the boy for water, and the boy said ok, but with almost an air of defiance.

“What’s your name?” asked Akbar 

“What’s yours” replied the boy?

“I’m Akbar,” said Akbar

“And I’m Mahesh raj,” said the boy “and sure just follow me home and you can have all the water you need”

Mahesh raj took them home and gave everyone water, and also directed them back to Agra, which was where Akbar ruled. 

Akbar was pretty intrigued by Mahesh Raj’s manner. Unlike everyone else he had encountered in his entire 13-year-old life, Mahesh was not treating him like a god, he seemed to consider Akbar his equal.

“Um so, I don’t know how else to bring this up – you do know I’m the king right?” asked Akbar. 

“A tall story” replied Mahesh Raj

“I am”, believe me.

“In the absence of any objective and incontrovertible proof, I dont” said Mahesh raj

Akbar being a typical teenager, now absolutely wanted to prove his point.

Mahesh raj didn’t believe him even after Akbar pulled out money with his face on it.

“That’s not objective” said Mahesh Raj – “it’s extremely hard to pull off a likeness on currency – this is the 16th century after all and metallurgical or printing arts are by no means perfect”.

Akbar would have continued but him chums were rushing him now – it had been a whole day since they had played Tomb Raider. They shouldnt hang back here any longer.

“Fine” said Akbar, “here’s my ring – just show up in court and then you’ll see”.

So then, Akbar and his hunting party went back to Agra.

Mahesh raj did travel to Agra after a while.

As it happens he reached Akbar’s court just as there was live entertainment in court.

There was a mimic, who could imitate any animal, it was amazing to hear. Every time he imitated some animal people would gift him something. Seeing as the people at court were the kingdom’s richest, those gifts were mostly gold and silver. 

Mahesh raj was in their midst. He was poor and had nothing much other than his lucky cap and the emperor’s ring.

When the mimic mimicked a bull, everyone was impressed and dropped more gold and silver into the mimic’s hat.

Mahesh Raj had a thought – he picked up a small pebble and bunged at the mimic’s back. Not forcefully. But the mimic’s back shivered exactly as a bull might have done if hit by a pebble.
This impressed Mahesh Raj. Mahesh Raj debated for a moment between the Emporer’s ring and his lucky but old and battered cap, and finally decided to gift the mimic the more valuable of the two – his cap.

While some people in the audience turned their noses up at the dirty looking gift(which wasnt even accompanied by a gift receipt), the Emporer noticed this and asked the boy to explain why his actions – both throwing the pebble and gifting the mimic his hat.

Mahesh Raj quickly explained how it was lucky hat and all. And that he’d chosen to show his appreciation only after the mimic acted exactly like a bull. Making a bull sound can be learnt, but this mimic clearly immersed himself in the role beyond just the voice. He’d reacted to the pebble exactly as a real bull may have. In short, the mimic was the original method actor.

Mimic had never before been appreciated for his method acting – and he was quick to forgive the pebble thrown at him.

Akbar was quite impressed by Mahesh Raj’s wisdom, and he also finally recognized the boy. Immediately he gave the boy a job(without any background checks or even so much as a glance at his resume). The job description was straight forward, hang around the court, get a salary and occasionally bonuses. Mahesh Raj accepted and about this time everyone started calling him Birbal – a very good decision because that decision led to a lot of stories, and frankly “The tales of Akbar and Mahesh Raj” just sounds awkward. “Akbar and Birbal” is much better.

Here’s one of those stories;

There was once an old merchant in the kingdom. He had some valuables with him, that he kept in the safest possible place – in a bag in a cupboard in his house.

There weren’t any bank vaults then. There were some sort of banks who could hold your money for you, but those banks were run by a person who would hold your valuables in a bag in his cupboard in his house. So all in all, the merchant was justified in keeping his valuables in his house.

Once the merchant’s house caught on fire.

Given most houses were made of straw and cowdung back then(both of which arent exactly fire resistant), this was going to be a disaster.

Luckily the old merchant managed to escape, but all his worldly possessions were in the bag in the cupboard in the burning house.

He wanted to go in again and get the bag but his neighbor, a much younger man stopped him.

“Are you crazy?” Why are you going back in there? 

“My money, gold, jewels, they’re inside in a bag in the cupboard. I need those!”

The neighbor asked: “Hmm money, gold, jewels. I can get those for you”

“Could you really?” asked the merchant

“Sure. I’d be risking my life, but I expect to be compensated in my way. I’ll get your bag, and I’ll give you whatever I like, and keep the rest for myself”

“Deal” said the merchant. They didnt sign a legal agreement, they didnt have their lawyers present. They didnt even shake on it. After all there was no time to lose.

The neighbor rushed in and rushed out with the bag.

The merchant was overjoyed. Within moments though his joy turned to bitter disappointment as the neighbor kept all the money, gold and jewels for himself and gave the merchant just the new empty bag.

It would have been better for his valuables to have perished in the fire than to see them owned by someone else. The merchant had made that agreement and should have foreseen this really, but he had been expecting his neighbor to have stuck to the spirit of the agreement than to the letter.

The merchant took his grievance to the King. Akbar realized how thorny this issue was and immediately assigned it to Birbal.
Akbar loved doing this, he would enjoy subjecting Birbal to challenges like these. 

Birbal called the merchant and the neighbor and all the witnesses and went over all the facts of the case.

While he understood the agreement, it was clear to him that the neighbor was being logically but unreasonably greedy. There was just one way to resolve this – the young man needed to be taught a lesson.

He asked all the people again “So, the agreement was that the neighbor would give you whatever he liked and keep the rest for himself?“

“Yes,” said the merchant, the neighbor, and all the witnesses.

“Well then it seems pretty clear cut. You, return this man’s gold, jewels and money and you can have the bag” he said to the neighbor.

“Wait, what?!!” said the neighbor.

“Its obvious from your own agreement” continued Birbal. “You promised to give the merchant whatever you liked, and to keep the rest for yourself. Obviously you liked the gold, the jewels and the money so you must give those to the merchant. And the bag, which you obviously did not like, that’s yours”.

Birbal was making a distinction between two definitions of the verb “like”, one that means “to find agreeable, enjoyable or satisfactory” and the other “like” which means “feel about, or consider or think about”.

Birbal was able to take advantage of this ambiguity. Now if the neighbor had chosen his words better, by using the word “choose to” instead of “like”, he’d have had an ironclad case here.

“I’ll give you whatever I choose to” would make for a pretty compelling argument. But then the neighbor wasn’t thinking about it in the heat of the moment, quite literally.

While it’s debatable that maybe Birbal should have let the neighbor keep the valuables anyway, he did after all risk his life by rushing into the burning house, Birbal may have been thinking about other things as well. The merchant was old and past retirement age and the neighbor was young. The neighbor was more likely to get more chances in life to make money. If nothing else, now that he’d had a rough but effective introduction to the importance of using precise and accurate verbiage, he could become a lawyer or maybe a tax consultant.

Some notes on the show

While Akbar and Birbal are often compared to Tenali Raman and Krishnadevarayar, they are quite different. Tenali Raman was a court jester and there was a clear boundary between him and the King. Birbal, however, had a completely different kind of relationship with Akbar. Akbar did not consider Birbal to be intellectually inferior to himself. And Birbal knew that. 

While their intellectual gap was certainly not as steep as that between Jeeves and Bertie Wooster(of PG Wodehouse fame), Birbal did often get Akbar and himself out of sticky situations the way Jeeves might have done.

Method acting is an interesting thing if you havent come across it before. Robert DeNiro’s example in “Taxi Driver” is one of the most famous ones, where he lived and worked as a real taxi driver to immerse himself in the role.

Character of the week

The character this week is Varaha, a boar that is the 3rd avatar of Vishnu. We’ve already encountered other avatars of Vishnu before – including in the very first Unicorn Fish episode. Check that episode out if you havent yet. The story starts with yet another of my dad’s wish-fulfillment gone wrong. Brahma the creator had given a demon called Hiranyaksha a lot of power and made him invulnerable to pretty much everything. Seriously we’re just a dozen episodes in this podcast, and we’ve already encountered 4 or 5 cases of Brahma giving people too much power. Sheesh you’d think there’s be some checks and balances on this power giving thing by now. But never mind, I’ll bring it up with Brahma when I see him next. Anyway, Hiranyaksha had kinda terrorized the whole earth, and the whole earth was now captive at the bottom of the Ocean. Don’t ask me how that works, to confess I don’t understand it very well myself – I do have the knowledge but it’s hard to connect the dots sometimes at my age. Its just extra dimensions or something fancy. So anyway, there was a loophole again. Hiranyaksha hadnt asked to be made invulnerable to boars(he would’ve been better of taking the safer approach of specifying what can kill him instead of specifying each and every animal that cant).

Vishnu took the form of a boar, and spoiler alert – dived into the oceans, restored the earth again, and killed Hiranyaksha. Its a good story by itself, we can cover it in a separate episode further down the road.

Next Week

Next week we’ll do a couple more akbar birbal stories,where you’ll see birbal in Sherlock Holmes mode – as he investigates a crime, and finds the perpetrator using the clever use of psychology.

The character next week is the tree of life that can give you anything you want. And no, its not an Ent from the lord of the rings movies. Nor is it the tree from the Avatar movie.