Himachal Pradesh Folk Tale – Dog Prince – {Ep.257}

Today’s episode is a Himachal Pradesh Folk Tale. It’s about a Dog who breaks all kinds of traditions by getting a human as its pet. Plus Magical transformations and a crack in a wall of solid gold that just can’t be fixed.

Namaskar and welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

In this episode, we’re doing a folktale from the northern state of Himachal Pradesh. Let’s jump right in.

Mr. and Mrs. Kathor were a perfectly ordinary couple, thank you very much. Mr. Kathor had an ordinary job doing perfectly ordinary things in medieval India – as a general handyman. Chopping down trees as a subcontractor to the woodcutter, milking the cows as a subcontractor to the farmer, delivering some messages here and there. Mrs. Kathor was a perfectly ordinary housewife – which was about the only profession that the patriarchy allowed women. That same patriarchy had engineered the couple into hoping that their unborn child would turn out to be a boy, and that same patriarchy required that they be disappointed when in fact it was a girl. Let’s call the child Bholi. Which is the hindi word meaning Innocent. This is consistent with our tradition of naming characters after the roles they play. And Bholi was quite innocent in all that was to follow.

One curious thing happened on the very day Bholi was born. A dog came to Mr. and Mrs. Kathor’s home. He didn’t do anything much. He just sat there observing them all day. Much as Professor McGonagal had done when she observed Mr. and Mrs. Dursley right before Harry Potter arrived into their lives. Except she’d been a cat.

Having been a few centuries too early for the Harry Potter series, Mr. and Mrs. Kathor did not think too much of the coincidence.

Over the next several years, Bholi grew up into a smart young lady. But Mr. and Mrs. Kathor did not quite appreciate her intelligence, her humor or her general personality. They only saw in her the chance they had been deprived of in not having a boy. And so they treated her much the same way the Dursleys treated Harry Potter.

Every time she got something wrong, they would menace her with vicious threats. They kept her on a short leash. Figurative leash, not a literal one. She’d often find herself in the doghouse over the smallest things. Again, a figurative doghouse. Not a literal one. Sometimes they would leave her home when going out to eat at the fanciest Dhaba. Not even bringing back so much as a Doggy bag. Even if Bholi tried to provide a very reasonable explanation, to Mr. Kathor at least, it sounded like a Dog-ate-my-homework kind of excuse.

And the worst threat of all and the most frequently used, was that they would give her away to the Dog. Yes, the very same dog that had visited them on the day she was born. That dog had returned every single day since then.

No one bothered to think that this was extremely unusual. Converting Bholi’s age into Dog years, that meant their daily visitor had broken all kinds of longevity records, not even factoring that he had been already fully grown at that time. At a minimum he should have had a long, flowing gray beard. But no one thought too deeply about it. Maybe because references like the Guiness Book of World Records or the Limca Book of Records didn’t exist yet in that century.

You may be wondering what that dog did all day, everyday. He was always there whether it was one of the dog days of summer, or whether it was raining cats and dogs. He didn’t really do anything. He just lay there and observed everyone. And you could swear that when he saw Bholi, he actually smiled.

One day the breaking point came when Bholi made a mistake in preparing her parents’ afternoon tea. She had put just a wee bit more ginger than how Mr. Kathor liked it. In a fit of rage, he immediately gave her away to the Dog. And he meant it.

The Dog realized that Mr. Kathor meant it, and actually yelped with excitement. Mr. Kathor’s order almost made the Dog raise the woof. Perhaps it was the idea of having a human as a pet. If every dog has his day, today definitely was the day. For this dog at least.

As the Dog was happily leading Bholi out of his home to his own, Mrs. Kathor began having second thoughts. She was the one who had started this whole thing by being the first to threaten this sort of outcome and now she regretted doing so. But she dared not speak up against her husband’s orders. So the best she did was to secretly give her daughter a handful of seeds, to scatter on the way so that they could follow her if need be.

One small bit of consolation was that Mrs. Kathor was confident that the Dog wouldn’t bite her daughter. She had seen the dog bark once or twice, and she had heard that barking dogs never bite.

Bholi meekly followed the Dog. Unlike the dog, she was having a ruff day. She wasn’t happy to have to leave home, despite the Dursleys-like treatment she got there. All the time she had spent at home cooking and cleaning for her parents – it felt like she had just been chasing her own tail.

But time to focus on the present. She wondered what kind of home the dog was taking her to. It was unlikely to be a manger, considering all the time over all these years that the dog had spent away from it. But whatever it was, she hoped it was a place where she could sleep like a log. After all, she had been working like a dog, never mind this very long walk.

Right now, her throat was parched, and she needed water.

“I’m thirsty. I need water,” she said out loud. And immediately turned crimson in her embarrassment at talking to a Dog and expecting it to understand.

Well this Dog not only understood her, but it replied in perfect Hindi.

“Of course! There’s a well there with water in it. There are steps inside, let’s go down”

Bholi was stunned. “You… you can talk. You can actually talk! Why didn’t you say anything before, all these years!”

“No one asked. And it wouldn’t have been polite for me to stick my nose into your conversations”

They went down the steps until they reached the water line, and surprisingly a very shiny golden door. Despite the apparent difficulty for one of canine anatomy, this Dog managed to get the key from under the doormat, unlock the door, and easily twist the door knob and get in.

Inside the door was neither a dark cave nor a janitorial closet for keeping the well clean. What lay beyond the doors was a magical palace and gardens. It was similar to what Dorothy observed when she first stepped out of her grayscale home and into the colorful land of Oz, to reference yet another Hollywood movie.

There was a beautiful garden with plenty of lawn space, and a dog walking area. Bholi collapsed into the nearest armchair. The furniture was new and shiny, and on the table were the latest issues of the Vanity Fur and Dogue magazines – crisp new issues with none of the pages being Dog-eared.

The butler brought them some Earl Greyhound tea prior to lunch. And no, he wasn’t a greyhound. He was a regular person. His master, the Dog, just liked that flavor of tea.

Speaking of the Dog, he said he’d freshen up and be back and when he returned Bholi was surprised to discover that he was actually a human too! Yup. He was secretly a Prince who had been cursed to transform into a dog whenever he was on the surface.

Bholi wondered why he hadn’t just stayed down here then, as a human?

But the Dog Prince shook his head. That would be the wrong option to pursue. You could say she was barking up the wrong tree. Or if she preferred, him staying down here would be like the tail wagging the dog. His primary priority was her. You see there was a prophecy….

Bholi rolled her eyes. There always was.

It wasn’t fun down here at all. It got boring pretty quick. There weren’t enough cats to chase, or bones to pick with anyone. It was no fun spending time with the German Shepherd who insisted on only minding the sheep, specifically German sheep. Or the Dalmatian, who insisted on playing hide-and-seek though he was easily spotted. Or the Great Dane, who was scared of the smallest of Danegers.

Sure it wasn’t the very worst, but it came close. The very worst would have been a Dog-eat-dog world. Speaking of which, lunch was now served. “Bone-appetit,” the Dog Prince wished Bholi before diving into his meal, which thankfully was not just boneless but also meatless.

“I’m a veggie dog,” he explained the lack of carnivorous options at the dinner table.

Time went on, and healed the Dog Prince’s boredom. Now that he had a perfectly normal companion, he seemed a lot more content with this underground world.

Bholi and the Dog Prince took their acquaintanceship to friendship and eventually to marriage. Everything was going fine. With the treasury of the Dog Prince’s kingdom at her disposal, Bholi felt generous enough to send out a greeting card and a box of sweets to her Dursley-like parents, one particular Diwali. She was careful to leave out a return address though. If they knew she was rich and happy, or even just happy, they’d show up to spoil her fun.

She couldn’t have been more correct. And though she had carefully omitted the return address, she had forgotten the handful of seeds that her mother had given her. She had spread them at regular intervals. And each of those seeds had now grown into a plant with distinctive flowers, like trail markers. That is how Mr. Kathor reached the well. Seeing a brilliantly shiny door down there, he walked down the steps and rang the bell.

There were some pats on the back, some handshakes, and lots of enthusiasm. Mainly from Mr. Kathor. It took Bholi a moment or two, but she finally let bygones be bygones and welcomed her father warmly.

The Dog Prince was a lot more genial as a host. He offered the best food and drink for his father-in-law. And he showed him around the palace, the home puppet theater, with the surround sound, which basically meant there was room for co-puppeteers to stand in every corner of the room and for everyone to deliver their lines in a synchronized way.

“This place is perfect!” Mr. Kathor said. “It’s flawless.”

“Sasurji, I don’t agree with you there” the dog prince said, using the hindi word for father -in-law.

After that he didn’t launch into the same rant as he had with Bholi about the Dalmatian, the great Dane, the German shepherd. But he instead complained about possibly the only flaw in the place. And that flaw was a big crack in the wall of the golden palace.

“I don’t get it. This is just solid Gold. You can just put some gold foil on this. Why do you really care about the crack?”

But the Dog Prince shook his head. He explained that there was a prophecy. This crack in the wall was a freebie that came with his own transformation into a dog. This could only be repaired by the father of a girl who had given away his daughter to the Dog Prince, and then visited them exactly a year later.

“Fine, get me some gold foil and I can repair it”

“Not so fast Sasurji, that won’t work. You need to mind my cattle for 12 years.”

Mr. Kathor was suspicious. “Are you trying to get free work out of me?”

But the Dog Prince said no, that was definitely not the case. “Maa Kasam,” he added

Well, Mr. Kathor did mind the Dog Prince’s cattle for 12 years. And magically the crack repaired itself. The Dog-Prince insisted that that is why it got fixed, and all this had not just been an elaborate plot to make his father-in-law repent for his earlier mistreatment of his daughter.

Mr. Kathor secretly still felt a simple bit of Gold foil could have avoided all this. But he was thankful to go back home after 12 years with rich clothes, and gifts.

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

Strictly speaking, this isn’t only from Himachal Pradesh. There are similar stories in other areas. 

To some degree there is even some similarity between this story and the Punjabi folk tale of the Crocodile King from Episode 203. There’s a theme of a girl marrying a royal who had been transformed into an animal. And the theme of the parent visiting the girl in her new home.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll be hearing the story of how a woman who brought the entire world to its knees. The one who rescued the world from a cold, bleak death was another woman – Anasuya. Anasuya may be well-known as the wife of one of the Saptarishis, but she was a vey remarkable person in her own right. 

Feedback

Thank you all for the comments on Social Media and on Spotify’s Q&A! I can’t directly reply to the questions there, but I’ll address them here on this show.

Samay, thank you for the praise. And I can certainly think of a few more stories that prominently feature parrots. More to come on those.

Kaira, thanks for the praise. As for the biggest fan of the podcast, I don’t know. It’s different folks at different times.

Libby, thank you so much for the kind words. Appreciate your long term support.

Abeer, indeed yes. Thanks to you and many others who have provided valuable suggestions and improved this podcast.

Abhinav, as it happens the next story refers to another story that involves the holy trinity and myself. I’ll cover that one soon as well.

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Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time!