In this episode, we’re doing a Kashmiri folk tale. We have done some Kashmiri Folk Tales before – you can check the links to those in the show notes. Today’s story is about a husband and wife and their disagreement and some unplanned adventure. There are also no supernatural elements in the story. Unless you include a cat that follows its owner’s instructions. It’s easy to see whoever imagined this folktale never owned a cat.
The story begins a few centuries ago, in a little village with a merchant and his wife arguing about something. But wait a second. These weren’t the husband and wife that the story is about. They were arguing about their son. The disagreement was whether the son was completely foolish or was he just foolish 99 percent of the time. At this point, let’s call the merchant’s son – Buddhu. As is usual on the show I’ve been naming the characters based on the role they play in the story. And Buddhu is synonymous with being foolish. Though, the Merchant’s wife would have disagreed because she didn’t think her darling son was as foolish as her husband made him out to be.
“I’m telling you, he’s absolutely hopeless,” said the merchant. “Yesterday, I asked him to feed the chickens, and he made them some egg sandwiches. Can you imagine? Egg sandwiches. Poor chickens. They were so traumatized, I doubt they will lay eggs for weeks.”
Buddhu’s mom shuddered. But it could have been worse, as she pointed out. He’s a boy in a patriarchal society in medieval India. All we have to do is to get him married and that’s it. Let him just inherit all our wealth and let’s just hope that his children turn out to be smarter.
But her husband didn’t agree. I don’t have any hope of finding a girl who will accept him for what he is.
The merchant’s wife kept telling him that he hadn’t given his boy a chance. Finally, he agreed to one last test. If the boy failed at this task, she would never bring up the topic of either marriage or inheritance. If he succeeded, well there was no chance at that, but if he did, the merchant would help find him a bride, and also arrange some capital so Buddhu could get started. Buddhu’s mom agreed. It was no big deal for her. She knew she could always get her husband to change her mind. Though she did get worried when her business-minded husband insisted on their agreement being recorded on stamp paper, with witnesses and everything.
Rubbing his hands with glee at finally being able to secure his own nagging-free future, the merchant got to work. He summoned his son immediately and gave him his assignment. He handed Buddhu 3 copper coins. Buddhu’s goal was to spend them.
“That’s it?” asked the lad.
“Not quite. There are some conditions” his father said. “Buy whatever you want with the first coin. Totally up to you. You can throw the second coin into the river.”
Buddhu nodded. Even someone as foolish as him could understand such simple instructions.
His father continued. “Then with the third one, buy me some stuff”
“What stuff?” asked Buddhu, which was a good question to ask.
“Buy me something to eat, something to drink, something to chew on and something to sow and something to feed the cows”
“With just one copper coin?” Buddhu asked, surprised. How was he going to get all that?
But he didn’t object. A parent’s word was law. Or so he was taught.
The next day he had a bit of a challenge. But not from the first or second coins. He bought himself a hearty breakfast from Parathas from a local seller and had his fill. That was easy, this story is set hundreds of years ago, when you could get a lot for just a copper coin.
He headed to the river to reluctantly execute the second of his father’s instructions.
But he hesitated. He worried that if he cast the coin into the river, sure he would have followed his father’s instructions, but then how was he going to buy all the stuff that his father had asked for?
Conflicted about whether or not to actually toss the coin in the river, he made the motion a few times and withdrew at the last second.
It was at this time that a young woman observed him. She was about his age, and she was the iron smith’s daughter. She questioned him, and he explained his dilemma. How was he going to manage to get something to eat, something to drink, something to gnaw on, something to sow in the ground, and something to feed the cows? He didn’t know how much milk cost, and what he could do to feed it to the cows.
The girl, whom I’m going to call Chatur, facepalmed at this point. What was the education system for the rich coming to, if people weren’t even learning the basics, she thought. She herself had the most basic education, her school was basically her home and her parents were her teachers. But she knew right away how to solve this problem.
She decided to help the fellow out. This was a generational rivalry. To her it seemed that Buddhu’s parents were demonstrating a lack of confidence in her generation, not just a lack of confidence in Buddhu. “Okay, let’s show those boomers,” she said. “First thing, don’t throw away the second coin”
“But I’d be directly disobeying my father’s instructions” Buddhu protested
“Don’t worry about it. He’s secretly hoping you don’t actually throw away the coin. He’s a businessman.”
Buddhu agreed, reluctantly.
“Now for the third coin, go buy a watermelon,” Chatur said. “You should be able to get a decent sized one in the marketplace for a copper coin.”
Buddhu stared blankly. Truth be told this was the first time in the story he showed signs of being foolish. But then Chatur explained that the watermelon checked all the boxes. You know it had juice to drink, pulp to eat, it could be gnawed. The shell could be fed to a cow. He just had to make sure he did not get the seedless variety, so that he could sow those seeds.
Buddhu realized that that was brilliant. And so he acted on her advice.
He went home and showed his parents the watermelon, presenting it as if it was his own idea. His mom had tears in her eyes, amazed that her son had done something brilliant after all. Buddhu’s father was still skeptical. So he pressured his son into admitting the truth.
Buddhu’s mom pointed out to her husband that irrespective of the fact that he had help, he had actually performed the task. That meant it was time to print some wedding invitations!
When Buddhu’s father pointed out that in order to do that they needed a girl for Buddhu to marry, she suggested Chatur. And why not? She had already proved that she could support him. That was, in their minds, the only qualification of a wife in medieval India.
Buddhu’s parents met up with Chatur’s parents and arranged their marriage. Chatur’s parents thought that seemed very advantageous to their girl. An Ironsmith’s daughter marrying into a significantly higher economic class – what was not okay about that? Chatur did not object either.
And so, the two were married. Everything was fine up until this point. But this is where Buddhu’s foolishness emerged. The lad listened to too many of his friends, and those friends were resentful of the fact that he was marrying someone considerably poorer than himself. They advised that the only way to make up for it was for him to systematically crush her spirit and all power of independent thought.
So he put his plan into motion right away. On their wedding night, Buddhu asked her to do the dishes. Considering that there had been a hundred wedding guests there were a lot of dishes to be done. Maybe they should have used paper plates or something. I don’t even know where they got those hundred plates and dishes from. But whatever, I shouldn’t judge. We divine creatures are known for some excesses as well. For example, you see how we can never have enough hands and heads. Everyone’s got 4, or 6 or 8. Anyway, I’m digressing.
Chatur had anticipated this when she saw Buddhu chatting with his friends earlier in the day. It wasn’t hard to guess. Buddhu’s so-called friends were pointing fingers at her and scrunching their noses. So Chatur said that the most terrible things would happen if she did any work in the house the first week of her marriage. Besides, they had enough help. They had kitchen maids and dishwashing boys.
“What terrible things?” asked Buddhu suspiciously.
“Obviously, I don’t know,” said Chatur. “This is superstition and is therefore very abstract and ambiguous enough that I can claim to have been right either way.”
Somehow Buddhu bought that argument and decided to wait until the 8th day.
Chatur cleverly did not disclose the fact that there was another tradition, which was that after the first week brides would visit their parents’ house.
When that visit sneaked up on him, and his own parents whole-heartedly supported it, Buddhu felt he had been cheated out of a spirit-crushing opportunity. This wasn’t fair at all. He contemplated visiting his in-laws and crushing his wife’s spirit right there, but then something else came along.
An offer from his parents. Buddhu’s mother had reminded her husband of his promise to provide some capital and set up their son with a business of his own. Buddhu’s father did this reluctantly, especially given that the brains behind his son’s success were on leave at the moment. But he gave his son a ship, some money, some fidget spinners to trade. He chose the kind of fidget spinners that were in high demand and most likely to net a profit even for someone as foolish as Buddhu.
Well, the part about getting a lot of customers quickly went according to plan. Buddhu had sailed to a neighboring country and set up his pop-up boat store at the local harbor market. But then Buddhu kept making basic mistakes and kept accidentally haggling down the price instead of up. Soon the word spread that there was a merchant selling his fidget spinners for practically nothing. But because Buddhu had a limited amount of fidget spinners after that point, he still made a profit, rather than a complete loss.
At that point, some of his own customers suggested they sell back his fidget spinners to him so that he could meet the demand. Thankfully for Buddhu the police came by to see what the commotion was. They had heard that someone was selling fidget spinners here at throwaway prices. Probably stolen. Just to be clear though, they said they weren’t here to investigate, so he could put away his license and registration and city permit and all that. They just wanted to see if he had any more fidget spinners left to sell.
He hadn’t. So the crowd reluctantly dispersed, some of them upset at having missed buying. A couple of those decided that this was a good business model that might work in the future, and that is how Black Friday and Amazon Prime day originated. Or so the rumor goes.
But let’s cut back to Buddhu who by now decided to grow his money even further. He knew how to. He was an accomplished gambler. Or he thought.
He went to the closest gambling establishment and played with the local poker expert. And lost all his money. The local poker expert, whom we can call Kapati, had a cat that she had trained very well. The cat would sit on its perch and have a perfect view of everyone’s cards. She would move her tail in a very well-rehearsed pattern that would convey to Kapati what cards her opponents were holding. Very often, the card players not suspecting a thing would actually applaud the cat for what they thought were tricks it was playing with its tail.
Like I said before, the shocking part here is not that Kapati got her cat to understand and execute a complicated sequence of tail movements to convey information of upto 52 cards. The shocking part is that Kapati got her cat to do anything, as any cat owner will attest.
Anyway, Kapati and her cat soon cleaned out Buddhu’s profits. After which he gambled his boat, and quickly lost it. He next put up some secret reserve money that he promised he had stashed on the boat. He was confident he would win the next round, despite having absolutely nothing to back up his confidence. So when he lost again, and the money was not found on the boat, Buddhu was put in jail.
Buddhu suffered in jail. The jailers were mean to him, and so were the other prisoners. They wouldn’t let him join in their game of cricket and the conversation would always run dry the moment he joined any of them.
There were murderers, burglars, who were ashamed to be seen in the company of such a foolish person. Who didn’t even know how to be a proper criminal.
One day though, as Buddhu was morosely staring out of the prison gates, he saw a traveler passing by. Buddhu called out to him and upon learning that the man was from his home country, he pleaded with him to take two letters. Postage paid. And not at all heavy. He’d just have to drop them at the closest post box when he got back to their home country.
Now, the two letters were to his wife and to his father. But Buddhu had accidentally switched the letters and envelopes. So his father was puzzled why Buddhu had addressed him as his sugarplum. The rest of the letter was filled with glowing details about how much money he had collected and the palace he was staying in, as a personal guest of the King. All made up stuff so that Chatur wouldn’t think any less of him.
But Chatur got the letter intended for his dad, where Buddhu spilled all the beans and asked for immediate assistance in paying off his loans to Kapati and bailing him out of jail. Please, he said many times in the letter. The Jail food was so bad. The parathas were not perfectly circular as he was used to. And instead of slightly chilled lassi, they served it at room temperature! He couldn’t take it any more.
Chatur sighed, it was up to her again to save the day. But there was a limited amount of stuff that she could accomplish in that neighboring country where people were even more misogynistic than what she was used to. So she disguised herself. Once she did that, everyone she met on her journey was courteous and offered her food, drink and shelter, all free of charge of course.
Chatur had found out everything she wanted about Kapati’s cat. She needed to spend some money to bribe a bunch of people. But she was happy to do that with the money she had borrowed from her father-in-law. But she had nothing to worry about, she was going to win it all back from Kapati. That might remind you of Buddhu’s confidence going into a game with Kapati. But there was a difference between her confidence level and that of Buddhu’s. She had intelligence.
Knowing what Kapati’s cat would do, Chatur was prepared for their game. Right at the beginning when the cards were distributed, Chatur let something out of her sleeve. It was a mouse that she had cleverly concealed. That got the attention of the cat. It leveled the playing field. And a level playing field was enough. Because as it turned out, Kapati was a pretty bad card player when she wasn’t cheating. Within a few mins she had lost everything to Chatur, including the ship, the debt that she held, and a bunch of other things.
With that Chatur, got not just Buddhu, but a bunch of other prisoners out of jail. Buddhu did not recognize his own wife in her disguise. Chatur told all the men she had released that she needed a crew to sail back home in the ship that she had just won. They all volunteered. Buddhu seemed indecisive, until she offered to name him captain of the ship.
He agreed eagerly, because that meant he would also make a decent pile of money to show his wife, and maintain some superiority over her.
The only thing Chatur asked for was some specific and key pieces of evidence, including his prisoner clothes with name labels, his frequent gambling card at Kapati’s establishment, Kapati’s sworn affidavit, and records of his canceled debt.
It’s not much of a story after that. Buddhu returned home on a handsome salary befitting the captain of a ship. Chatur disappeared. But then welcomed him at home with open arms.
Chatur had told herself that she would forgive and forget and move on. But Buddhu just had to continue with his domineering attitude. It was infuriating when he especially began to brag about all the money he made. But it got worse when he began ordering Chatur about, asking her to do menial household chores. That got Chatur’s goat!
She politely waited to see if he would stop, but Buddhu continued. And what’s more he had the effrontery to do it in front of his parents! She herself had been wiser and had avoided exposing him in front of his fellow prisoners.
Chatur stopped Buddhu mid-sentence and revealed everything, and with all the carefully collected evidence it wasn’t hard for Buddhu’s parents and indeed Buddhu himself to see what a fool he had been. But he had brought it upon himself.
Some Notes on the Story
That’s about it for this story. If you’re looking for a moral, there are many in the story. Don’t try to rule over someone who got you out of a pickle, no matter what your friends tell you. Amongst all the things the one to call out is that if. Somehow in the story, despite all that Chatur was content to continue on with Buddhu. With her talent she could have made millions.
The word Buddhu means foolish, and Chatur means clever, and Kapati means cheat in sticking to our tradition of naming characters based on the role they play.
The original story had Buddhu attempting to be significantly more evil towards Chatur, rather than just having her do work at home.
Other Kashmiri Folk Tales we have done before:
Adventure of a Well-brought up Princess in a Well – {Ep.113}
The Story of why fish laughed {Ep.17}
That’s all for now.
Next Time
It’s been a while since we did the Mahabharata. So we’ll continue the story in the next episode. We’ll do a couple more stories about the Pandava and Kaurav brothers growing up.