This episode is a folk tale from Maharashtra, although there are variations of this in pretty much all of the Deccan. The Deccan is a plateau covering large parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and even bits of Kerala.
So today’s folk tale is about a jackal.
Our story starts with the jackal and his friend. The jackal’s bestie was not actually a beast. It was a human. A barber.
If that seems like an odd pair of friends, I do recommend you check out a much more unlikely pair in the Vikram and Betaal stories.
Now, between the human Barber and the Jackal, who was the cleverer of the two? If you said the very human and therefore intelligent barber, you would be totally wrong.
In every little thing they did together as friends, the Jackal managed to come out in front by just a tiny bit. Not enough for the Barber to be offended but enough for him to resent it a little.
For example, take last night’s dinner. They had shared pakoras but the Barber was sure the Jackal got more than half. And that time he accidentally slipped and fell into the ditch? Was it just luck that the Jackal didn’t fall in? Had the Jackal just staged the whole thing?
Regardless, the Barber had determined that the next time they tried anything together, he would try and get an advantage over the Jackal.
And coincidentally it seemed the Jackal had just such an opportunity he had lined up.
“I have an idea for what we should do next. Let’s pool our money and buy a farm!” said the Jackal in a perfectly normal human voice.
“What?! Why would we do any such thing?” asked the Barber. He wasn’t surprised that the Jackal could speak. Maybe he did the first time, but not now when they had been friends for years.
“Just imagine, it’s basically our own private vegetable garden. We’ll be able to eat cucumbers, melons, grapes, whatever we want, whenever we want”
That seemed like a good deal to the Barber. So without asking any questions, he fetched his life savings. The Jackal, being a Jackal and therefore not in a salaried occupation, had no savings to contribute. He volunteered to do all the paperwork to buy the farm and then promised to do all the hard labor, sowing the seeds, growing the crops, and harvesting them.
The Barber would not have to do anything! He need not even bother himself with the details of where exactly this farm was located.
Somehow the Barber was fine with that. Never mind a deed to the property, the Barber did not even ask for a receipt for his entire life’s savings that he handed over to the Jackal.
Many months passed. And in that time, whenever the Barber asked whether they both could go to the farm and eat all those cucumbers and melons and grapes, the Jackal answered that the fruit was not quite ripe yet.
The Barber realized that this situation had turned out exactly the way he did not want. He seemed to be at the losing end of yet another deal. So he secretly followed the Jackal one day. And the Jackal went to an actual farm.
The Barber was about to jump out from behind a tree and announce that he was wrong for suspecting his friend of having spent the farm money on other things.
But then he noticed two things. First, the farm was full of all kinds of plants bearing all kinds of fruits and vegetables.
And second, there was a large group of Jackals waiting patiently by the gate.
The Jackal let them all in and the beasts began to gobble up everything, feeding on the ripest of fruits and vegetables.
Angry at being cheated out of the things he had financed, the Barber decided to get his revenge. He waited until all the Jackals left. And then he crept into the farm. He found the ripest, juiciest-looking melon closest to the gate and then coated it all over with glue.
This must have been a really special brand of glue. Because the next day when the Jackal arrived and grabbed the melon, the glue was still effective! It sealed his mouth shut. Now if you’re like me, your first question on hearing this would be to inquire the name of the manufacturer of this amazing everlasting glue. But this being a folk tale, the glue was of course completely fictitious.
The poor Jackal, with his mouth, sealed shut, tried to scream but couldn’t.
He jumped around frantically, but his mouth remained shut. He realized that this trick must have been played on him by the Barber. Rather than go to a doctor, he decided he would go and end his life somewhere far away. Far from the human who had bested him.
He lay down on the ground and waited for the end. It did not come. Instead, what came was the rain. And as everyone knows, water can completely wash away glue, even super glue like this one.
The Jackal had a new lease on life. But he was a trickster. He still needed to play some tricks. He looked at all the mud around him and that gave him an idea. Conveniently he saw an empty pot that just happened to be there, in the middle of a jungle. He quickly filled it with mud and covered the top of the pot with leaves. Just as he had seen milkmaids do.
He went to the nearest town and began shouting “Fresh Butter for sale! Utterly Butterly Delicious!”
No one seemed to think it strange that a jackal was walking with a pot on its head like a milkmaid.
One lady in particular bought into the act so easily she wanted to buy the whole pot of butter. She did want to see the butter, but the Jackal easily talked her out of it.
If she opened the top of the pot, it would spoil the butter, didn’t she know? Look most packaged foods have a warning – “If opened, consume within a day”. His butter was preservative-free and if she opened it now, it would spoil within an hour. She just had to take his word for it.
She did. And she paid him 10 silver coins for providing what she considered an exclusive product. None of her friends or neighbors had bought butter from a Jackal before.
Not sure what he meant to do with it or why he needed the money in the first place, but the Jackal somehow managed to put the money away and made his way out of the village. The first thing he saw was the carcass of a Buffalo where by chance a buffalo had died.
To the Jackal, this was a treat. It had been a long time since he had tasted Buffalo. Without worrying too much about the health risks, he dug right in.
As he was busy filling himself up on buffalo, he did not notice until it was too late that a crowd had formed around the carcass. Luckily for him, the crowd did not notice him.
He had to think his way out of this. The buffalo must have been a family pet and a crowd-pleaser. Many people were upset and crying. If they found out he had been eating the buffalo, things might come to a sticky end for him.
He had an idea that he clearly borrowed from other stories. He decided he would play god! From within his hiding spot inside the remains of the buffalo, he started speaking in a loud voice.
Everyone was shocked. Not surprising though, imagine what would happen if someone had lived with a pet for years and only to find out after it died that it could speak.
But the voice assured them that it was the spirit of their buffalo, here before them to thank for treating it well all their lives.
When the gullible villagers asked if there was anything they could do for him, he only asked for some chicken. Weirdly, that did not raise any suspicions in the villagers’ minds. Maybe they figured it was a necessary passage to the afterlife. Maybe because the Buffalo was tethered next to the Chickens all its life.
But regardless, in yet another mini-victory for animals over people, the people complied.
And then just as the Buffalo’s spirit told them to, they left the chicken alone with it and walked away without moving or cremating its remains.
Well, when the villagers were gone, so was the Jackal. He wandered here and there. Finally one day, he got a taste of his own medicine. He was scared off by a little child hiding in a tree who pretended to be a scary leaf monster. It was surprising that an animal that managed to outwit the Barber and a whole village in an impossible situation was outclassed by a child’s voice and some moving branches in a tree. But there you have it. Such are life’s mysteries.
Panicking and scared out of his wits, the Jackal ran away blindly. He finally stopped running after he realized the scary leaf monster was not chasing him. The Jackal looked around and realized with horror that he had accidentally entered the one place he had resolved to avoid.
He was in the village where the Barber lived. His worst fears were realized as just then, the Barber captured him in a trap.
The Barber jumped for joy, all these days he’d neglected his work and exclusively been hanging around setting traps in case the Jackal came back. And now it had worked!
The Barber quickly tied up the Jackal and took him home.
He could have just ended Jackal’s life right away. But no. To him, it totally made sense to celebrate first.
So he left the animal for his wife to watch him. Maybe he should have warned her or something because no sooner had he gone, the Jackal begged the Barber’s wife to let him drink a little water from the puddle just outside the house.
She resisted but eventually gave in after he promised not to run away the moment she cut the ropes. Because trusting the word of the creature that betrayed your husband hundreds of times is totally fine. If he asks politely.
Naturally, as everyone may have guessed, the moment she cut the ropes, he did not drink the water and offer for her to tie him up again. He ran away.
He escaped the village and made it to the next one. And the next one. And after some village-hopping, he finally got to the capital of the Kingdom he was in.
He was passing by a rundown house when he heard an interesting monologue coming from within.
It was an old man complaining about how he was penniless and that he had 7 daughters to take care of. He added that if anyone should walk in and ask for one of his daughter’s hands in marriage he would agree, no questions asked.
The Jackal thought that this was an offer too hard to resist. It was just what he always wanted. A human bride.
So he walked into the house and after a quick round of introductions, calmly asked the poor penniless man for the hand of his eldest daughter.
“The right one or the left one?” asked the man. “And what will you give me in return?”
“You fool! I’m asking for her hand in marriage” replied Jackal. “You just announced it a few minutes ago as I was passing by”
That gave the man some pause. He had been saying that sure. Because he’d listened to enough episodes of this podcast to think that a prince would just happen to chance by and take him up on his offer. But a Jackal?! Still, he could not go back on his word, so he did agree to the union.
I’d like to say that the girl had a choice in all this, but I’d be lying.
She was married to the Jackal right away by the poor man who happened to have the authority to officiate the wedding.
And right after the Jackal took her to his home. This is the first mention of a home for the Jackal. As you might expect, his home was a cave. The cave seemed completely inaccessible except that the Jackal knew a secret staircase that led there.
When they got inside the cave, the girl was pleasantly surprised to see that it had a palace inside it.
In a plot twist that makes no sense whatsoever, it was revealed at this point that the Jackal was not really a Jackal. It was a human, a magician in the guise of a Jackal.
Yup, I was shocked too when I heard this story the first time.
The magician simply preferred to live as a Jackal. But he did not reveal his secret even to his new wife. He would only take off the Jackal skin very briefly each morning to wash it but then would very quickly squeeze his 6 feet tall, 180 pounds body into the skin of a 1 foot tall and 20-pound jackal.
This continued every day without the Jackal’s wife noticing, which goes to show – there’s some value in waking up early.
One day though the girl’s father came to visit. And to complain about how he still had 6 daughters to take care of. Seeing as he’d had letters from his daughter describing a luxurious life, he felt it was time to ask his prosperous son-in-law for a handout. Even if said son-in-law was a Jackal.
“Oh quit your whining,” said Jackal. He asked the man to wait where they were, outside the cave. He didn’t want his father-in-law to know he had a palace inside. The man might just move in with his family.
Instead, the Jackal brought him a watermelon.
What am I to do with this? He asked.
“Eat the pulp, drink the juice, play with the seeds and then plant the largest one in the lot. Then sell the fruit you get out of it” said the Jackal
“That’s better than nothing,” thought the old man and went home. He did plant the largest seed in their yard. To his surprise the next day, the seed had germinated and was now a huge watermelon plant. The old man’s neighbor lady who had a habit of peering over the garden fence decided that the watermelons were greener on the other side. She offered to buy a melon from him, earning him his first sale.
The neighbor lady cut open the melon in her kitchen and instead of the typical pulp was shocked to see that it was full of seeds. Only they weren’t seeds. They were diamonds and rubies and sapphires! This was enough to buy a football team! She positively must buy out all of her neighbor’s stock, she thought. So she quickly went back and brought every single melon the old man could sell her.
The watermelon plant withered and died overnight. And the family had made 30 silver coins, which was more money than they had seen their whole life.
That day, the youngest daughter happened to find one melon in the corner that had been missed somehow. She cut it open to eat it and found all kinds of precious stones! Now it made sense to her why their neighbor had been so eager to buy every last melon.
She told her father everything and the two of them confronted the neighbor. However, the neighbor cooly denied everything.
At least thought the father it’s fine. We can’t get every last precious stone. But we can still live a life of luxury with just the stones we found in the last melon. That’s what he thought.
But when he tried to sell the stones, he was immediately arrested on suspicion of smuggling, money laundering, and non-payment of income taxes. The precious stones were confiscated.
And no one believed his story about how he had got those jewels.
Well, after the family somehow managed to bail him out, the old man then went back to the Jackal. The Jackal seemed ready for this. He gave the old man a magic pot. Something that could make any food instantaneously and with no raw ingredients. Just water.
It was amazing! The old man and his daughters loved this gift. They didn’t have inventory management or cooking or grocery shopping problems to deal with.
If they wanted chocolate chip ice cream with chopped walnuts and sprinkles, they instantly got chocolate chip ice cream with chopped walnuts and sprinkles.
But unfortunately for the family, the King of the land coincidentally was passing by and eavesdropping on his subjects. He heard about this magic pot and confiscated this magical gift immediately.
At least this time the old man wasn’t arrested! He did go back to the Jackal a third time. Because this is a folk tale and these things are usually done in threes. The Jackal was expecting that too. He gave his father-in-law a rope and a stick this time. This was straightforward. The rope and stick had a single purpose. The rope would tie up whomever the old man wanted, and the stick would beat them. And they would only obey the old man.
“What if I tried it on you?” the old man asked the Jackal
“Don’t be silly enough to think that I don’t know the administrator password to the rope and stick!”. More importantly, aren’t you convinced yet that I’m on your side?
The old man did try the rope and stick and they worked perfectly on the neighbor lady until she returned all the melons.
It also worked on the jeweler who returned the jewels he had confiscated.
And it worked on the King who promptly returned the magical pot.
And after all that, the Jackal’s wife did manage to wake up early enough one day to discover his secret, when he took off his Jackal skin to wash it. She promptly burned the skin so he would have to stay as a human forever.
If it was such a magical skin, she really should have kept it locked instead of just burning it up.
And everyone lived happily ever after. Except for the Jackal who was miserable because he missed the carefree Jackal life. And the victims of the stick were not happy either. They lived in constant fear of it.
And the Barber and his wife were upset at having missed the chance to get revenge on the Jackal.
So come to think of it, it was only the old man and his seven daughters who were happier at the end of the story.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
It’s no coincidence that a Jackal and a Barber were chosen to represent all animals and all humans. For no apparent reason at all, a barber was thought to be the cleverest of humans just as a jackal was considered the cleverest of animals.
And if you’re wondering what the cleverest bird is, it’s obviously the crow. That’s one area where modern science may agree with common human knowledge.
Anyway, back to the Jackal and the Barber. The story is almost in two different parts. The first part is a contest between the Jackal and the Barber. A battle of wits that is handily won by the Jackal, proving once again that the best of the humans is no match for the best of the animals.
In the second half, the Jackal was revealed to be a human as well, dispelling the notion that an animal can be smarter than a human.
If you think about it, the second half of the story takes on in a completely different direction, almost as if it was in reality two separate stories that were hastily joined together. Now given that I have inexhaustible knowledge of the past, present, and future, I can, in fact, confirm that these were indeed two separate stories that were put together in haste.
The idea of those gifts, particularly gifts 2 and 3 are very similar to the ones we covered in Episode 23 – Magical Tweetment!
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do a story from the Panchatantra where we’ll get more life lessons from animal behavior!