In this episode, we’re doing a Kannada folk tale from Karnataka. It’s called the Dead Prince and the Talking Doll, and it features, besides a dead prince and a talking doll, a terrible case of mistaken identity that could easily have been solved if people only spoke to their roommates.
Let’s jump right in.
Princess Nachike was trapped in the room. The door was closed tight, and she was completely cut off from the outside world. She was trapped in here with no means of escape. Her only companion was a Dead Prince lying on the bed. She cursed her parents, her luck, and cursed herself. But then she stopped and decided that we should hear how she got trapped in the first place.
So let’s rewind a little bit. By a little bit, I mean 12 whole years!
Back when the Princess was a wee little girl. Just doing regular Princess things, like making her governess play make believe tea parties with her. That’s when she heard a cry from outside. It was a beggar. The King and Queen thought it was perfectly okay for the Princess’s room in the palace to have a window looking straight down into the street. What’s the worst that could happen? The people were sufficiently ill-treated that they didn’t even have the motivation to try and attempt to kidnap the Princess in exchange for the ransom of easing up the Kingdom’s economic policies and taxes.
The Princess went to her window and looked down at the beggar. It was an old man with a beard who clearly hadn’t eaten anything in a long while. He asked her for bread.
The Princess slowly shook her head and said she didn’t have any. She also wondered – if the beggar didn’t have bread, why didn’t he just eat cake?
The beggar didn’t give up. He asked her for money to buy bread instead.
The girl hesitated, at which point the beggar added that she was going to marry a dead man.
I mean, what? Where had that come from? Princess Nachike was shocked into silence. And what’s more the governess didn’t intervene to tell strange men not to make such wild remarks to their future queen. Maybe the governess was too busy playing with the tea playset to take any notice.
She wanted this man to go away, him and his weird comment about the liveliness of her future husband. The only way to make him go away, she thought was if she paid him.
“Do you take Credit cards?” asked the Princess.
At which, the beggar replied that he didn’t know what Credit cards were. Why not just give him some cash?
So she found some jewelry of hers and gave it to the beggar. He did go away.
But her relief only lasted 24 hours. Because to no one’s surprise except Princess Nachike’s the beggar was back the next day. And he made the same prediction again. And Princess Nachike paid him again. Hey, so what if paying him hadn’t worked once. It was bound to work if she tried again right? Wrong. He was back the next day. But Princess Nachike didn’t give up. She was confident the beggar would stop if she just kept giving him money. She didn’t stop even when later on, the beggar started showing up in a Rolls Royce, which he had been able to purchase with all of the Princess’s jewelry that he had amassed over the years.
One day, 12 years into this daily ritual, the King of the land caught the Princess in the act of handing the beggar’s personal secretary yet another necklace. When she explained that she had been doing this for 12 years, he finally understood why there was such a huge dent in his treasury. Upon further learning that the reason Nachike had been paying the beggar was that she felt uncomfortable about his prediction, the King did something strange. He decided that there was nothing to be gained by staying in this kingdom and that they would all go away. On exile.
“Isn’t that a bit of an overreaction?” asked Nachike.
But the King only glumly shook his head. To be clear, he didn’t have any extra information or reasons to trust the words of a beggar.
The Queen, who was also in the room, suggested that maybe they should just get the beggar and ask him to explain himself. The King was supreme overlord of everyone in the Kingdom, including the beggar. All he had to do was to ask. The beggar would probably explain.
But the King still wouldn’t listen. “No. Nachike’s fate is sealed. What’s the point of doing anything anymore? Let’s just go away” replied the King.
So, they did go away. And Nachike and her mother had to go along.
Now coincidentally in a neighboring Kingdom something unusual was happening as well. The Prince of that land, let’s call him Prince Nidde, was the subject of the unusual occurrence. About the same time that Nachike and her parents were packing up their bags, Nidde collapsed, as if he had fainted.
The doctors were fetched immediately of course. But each had a different opinion of what had happened to the Prince. One doctor was certain the Prince was no more, nothing further could be done. Another asked if the Prince had pricked his finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, because in his opinion, the Prince had gone into a deep sleep. The Sleeping Beauty kind. Another said Nidde was indeed asleep but that it was aliens that caused it. Another doctor wanted to reproduce the scenario to understand how it happened and asked the King and Queen to line up their remaining children for him to experiment on.
No one offered a cure.
The Prince’s family could clearly see Nidde was no longer breathing. And yet they didn’t have the heart to cremate his body. One minister had an idea to suggest. He said why not put the body in a new building built for that purpose. They could also put food, water and jewels in the building.
“Why should we put in food and water and all that?” asked the King.
“I’m not sure. But the Egyptians have been doing it. It’s a cultural trend we can shamelessly appropriate because no one is going to judge us for centuries”
So that’s what they did. They had a special mansion constructed. Right in the middle of the forest for shock value. So that the Prince, when he woke up would be shocked and wonder where everyone was. It might make a nice meme, the minister added.
Also, no one was sure about the amount of food and water the Egyptians put in their pyramid shaped tombs. So they decided to go with the arbitrary amount of 12 years worth of food and water for a single person.
Having sealed up the tomb, everyone went their merry ways.
Not long after that, guess who happened on the scene? Nachike and her family of course. Nachike badly needed to use the restroom after a long day’s walk. Observing the mansion and thinking it looked like a public restroom, she decided to rush in. She walked in and observed the Prince lying on the bed. At first she thought he was asleep.
But after using the restroom when she approached him, she realized that he wasn’t breathing. Shrieking in horror she tried to storm out of the place only to find that the door was shut. She tried to twist the doorknob, but the door remained shut. She was stuck inside. She hollered for her parents. Her father could hear her alright.
“Get me out of here, dad. There’s a dead man in here” she said.
But the reply when it came, chilled her to the bone. “Ah this is your fate. This was bound to happen.”
“No, it was just the wind that closed the door and now it is stuck. A good hard shove should open it” she suggested.
“No my child,” the King replied. “There is nothing I can do. The prophecy has come true. Marry that man and may you both live happily.”
He paused and added “I mean may you live happily, and may he stay dead happily”
With that, the King announced that he was leaving, and to write to him if they ever had grandchildren.
Nachike would have rather banged her head on the brick wall than to try to talk sense into her dad. That way maybe the wall could break and she could get out. But then she decided she might not survive the attempt. She was after all a delicate princess, brought up on the finest foods and had never had to do a minute of exercise in her life.
She looked around and realized that the pantry was well stocked. Maybe she could survive on the food here until someone came along and she could get them to shove the door open.
So she stayed on, and lived right there with the Prince’s body. Only the Prince wasn’t dead. He was asleep. Definitely. Because she definitely heard him snoring a few times. And yet he didn’t respond when she tried to wake him up. She massaged his arms and legs everyday hoping that would revive him.
About 10 years passed. No one had come by. And Nachike longed for someone to talk to. Anyone. Just as she was thinking of that, someone did come by. It was a young woman. And she was at the skylight?!
“Hi, what are you doing up there?” asked Nachike. The girl at the skylight introduced herself as Chiruki and said she was passing and because she was an acrobat she did what came naturally to her – she climbed the building.
“Would you like to come in?” asked Nachike politely. To which the acrobat replied that she would love to drop in. And she did.
Nachike should probably have asked her to fetch some rope so that Nachike could have climbed out the way Chiruki had dropped in. But truth be told Nachike wasn’t as keen about getting out of here anymore. Stockholm syndrome perhaps.
Chiruki also couldn’t open the door and the two were stuck inside. But at least they had each other. Nachike continued to massage the Prince’s arms and legs. 2 more years passed and supplies were running low.
It was around this point that Nachike heard a bird outside the window. Oh yes, did I mention there was a window? Well, there was. She couldn’t have escaped through it, but she could have reached out and touched the branches and leaves of a nearby tree. But that’s about it.
Now let’s go back to the bird. It was an ordinary bird doing something extraordinary. It spoke like a human would. It clearly instructed Nachike to take the leaves of the tree it was sitting on, crush them in a silver cup and feed them to the Prince. That would wake him up. Well, she had heard crazier things. And the cost of trying this was not high, and the reward might be high. So she did exactly as the bird had instructed.
But before she actually poured the drink into the Prince’s mouth, she decided that she should shower and dress up first. The Prince must see her at her finest.
Chiruki asked her what the cup was, and Nachike told her everything the bird had said. While the Princess was off making herself presentable, the acrobat saw an opportunity for herself and poured the drink into the Prince’s mouth. Instantly the Prince woke up. The acrobat introduced herself as the Prince’s wife. Which actually made the Prince very happy. He had sensed even in his deep sleep that someone had been massaging his arms and legs everyday for 12 years. Obviously it must have been Chiruki, he was sure.
The Acrobat did nothing to change that impression. And what’s more she introduced Nachike as her servant. Nachike heard all this and would have said something. But her heart was broken at the sight of Prince Nidde and Chiruki being very friendly with each other. She didn’t say a word. Which only made things worse for her. Because Chiruki continued to treat her like a real servant.
Silently Nachike bore it all.
The three of them lived in that home, with only two of them truly happy. The problem of supplies remained, and soon they might run out of food. The Prince announced he would go grocery shopping for the three of them.
“How?” asked the Acrobat. “The door’s locked”
The Prince went right up to the door knob and twisted it and it opened.
Princess and Acrobat gasped, astonished.
“You must both be from neighboring kingdoms. I know everywhere else you have to twist the doorknob to the left to open it. In my Kingdom we make doorknobs so that you have to twist them to the right”
Nachike sighed. Only 12 years of her life wasted because she hadn’t tried the doorknob the other way. But a Princess learns to look past that. And it was pointless now. She wasn’t going to walk away from her Prince now even though the door was open. She loved him too dearly and she couldn’t imagine going anywhere else.
Prince Nidde, meanwhile, asked them if they wanted anything besides the groceries. Chiruki asked for street food, something she had been dying for. All the royal food in here was upsetting her stomach.
That puzzled Nidde as he had expected his wife, who claimed to be a Princess, to be accustomed to royal food. But he didn’t say anything.
He was also puzzled that Nachike asked him for a talking doll. Just a doll with a movable lower jaw. Not an actual talking doll. Those had probably not been invented yet.
The Prince came back with supplies and with samples of street food from all the food carts he could find. And he got a talking doll.
Observing his wife devour all the food in an extremely unceremonious way deepened his suspicions. So he decided to spy on the servant. That is how he overheard Nachike whispering to the doll. And what he heard there explained the irregularities he was seeing.
Nachike confessed all to the doll. Her childhood, her journey, how she was trapped in here, how she had heard the bird and how the Acrobat had dropped into her life. How she was a good friend for two years, and how she had stabbed her in the back by pretending to be the Princess.
Well, that was proof enough, thought the Prince. In the original story he did a lot worse than politely waking up Chiruki and confronting her with the truth. But we needn’t go into that here. Let’s just say that Chiruki got nothing for giving Nachike 2 years of her life. And she lost quite a bit because of the 2 days of deception.
Nachike and Nidde did get married, back at Nidde’s Kingdom. And the Prince became King, which I think was the wrong decision. Why pick a Prince who had a tendency to nod off for years at a time. What if Nidde were leading a major war, or were negotiating with other Kings and he were to simply fall into another long sleep? The Kingdom would be in ruins.
But the King, Nidde’s father, seemed ready to take that chance. After all, his daughter-in-law had a cure.
That’s where we’ll end it this week.
Some notes on the show
There are elements in this story that are similar to many others you may have heard in other folk tales and stories around the world. One variation of this tale is heard in Europe, it’s called the Needle Prince, because the Prince in that story has hundreds of needles stuck in him. The Princess removes most of them, but in a moment of distraction it’s someone else who takes out the last needle and delays a happy ending.
There’s another version from Iran where the Princess uses a hand-operated fan to cool the body of the Prince in slumber.
There’s also the motif of someone sharing a secret with an inanimate object. In other stories that usually is a tree. That later gets chopped down to make a drum. When the drum is played it blasts out the secret.
No such thing needed in today’s story where the Prince simply overheard the whole thing.
As is the tradition on the show, the names of the characters are representative of the roles they play. Nidde means sleep, and Nachike is shy in Kannada. Chiruki is a super word that could mean agile, sly, clever, deceitful depending on the context. An appropriate name for a girl who could climb in through the skylight, and who can take undue credit.
Here are some other Kannada folk tales we have covered before.
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll do another folk tale. This one is an adventure of a prince who just wants to solve a pest problem in his Kingdom. To do that, he has to go on a quest to get a special flower that only appears when a Princess laughs. The story also features a tree growing inside a giant’s mouth when he was sleeping. But what do you expect? It’s a folk tale. We have to bend reality. A lot.
Now I don’t normally do back-to-back stories in the same category. I usually mix things up. But someone specifically requested this story, so I’ll make an exception. Also, I just want to say that I know many of you have requested stories that I haven’t gotten to yet. I ask for your continued patience as I go through my backlog of requests and balance different categories. If you think it will be helpful for me to setup some kind of a poll on the website so you can have visibility into the requests and vote on them, I would be happy to do that. Let me know what you think.