In this episode, we’re doing folk tales again. It’s been a while since we did one from Assam, and I have had a listener request for one, so that’s what we’ll be doing this week. This Assamese Folk Tale is an epic showdown between a Monkey and a Jackal. You might think this is a toss-up because monkeys and Jackals are some of the cleverest creatures when it comes to folk tales. But if you’ve always wondered which one is the cleverer one, you will receive an answer this week. We’ll see one of them definitely gain an upper hand.
And I know at the end of the last episode I identified one of the belligerents as a Fox instead of a Jackal. Well, I’m a little sheepish about my mistake. I’ll explain it later in the show notes.
The story begins with a Monkey and a Jackal. Let’s call them Baandor and Xiyal. I’m just sticking with the tradition of this show, to name the characters using words from local languages. Those are Assamese words that literally mean Monkey and Jackal.
As is typical in such cases, the showdown between Baandor and Xiyal was preceded by actual friendship. Yes! Baandor and Xiyal were friends. They socialized – you know, visited each other’s homes for tea, liked each other’s cliched posts on Facebook, and that sort of stuff.
Now when the forest they lived in underwent some changes. They discussed the changes over tea one day.
“It’s Climate Change,” said Baandor. “Bet it’s all those cows that the villagers keep”
Xiyal thought it had something to do with the natural variations in the Solar cycle.
It was debatable whether Jackal science was more advanced than Ape science. But what was undeniable was that food was getting scarce in the forest. Most prey had migrated away from the forest.
Baandor had considered packing up and moving as well, but home prices being what they were, it seemed unlikely that he’d find a cozy treehouse in a forest with abundant food. He’d looked up Westimates on Willow.com and magicbarks.com, the leading home search sites for tree homes and decided he could not afford a new house.
Xiyal had the same concerns. Besides, his kids were in school and he was a little hesitant to move them to a different school in the middle of the school year.
“I think we have no choice except to try to get creative about how we get food,” Baandor said.
“What if we take seeds from fruits and vegetables and bury them in the ground and water them from time to time?”
“What will that do?” asked Xiyal. “I’ve seen squirrels do that with nuts and acorns. All it does is to make the nuts cold”
Baandor shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know what that will do. I’ve seen humans doing it. I’ve never fully understood the purpose. They are always putting stuff in the ground and then pouring water over it for a long time. I never pay attention to them after that”
Xiyal had an idea at this point and shared it. “There is another way we can get food. You know how humans are always walking about with picnic baskets and bundles of food? All we have to do is to… ahem… scare some humans. They’ll drop the food and run for their lives and then we grab it all and eat it.”
Baandor thought that this was a fab idea. He had long been curious about human cooking but never had the courage to try and steal human food.
But Xiyal had a plan that might just work. They key was that humans were scared of loud or sudden noises. Xiyal and Baandor would stay out of sight in bushes next to the path the humans usually took. At exactly the right time when a human carrying food was walking between the bushes, the two friends would scream and shout at the top of their lungs. Most likely the foolish human would drop any food they were carrying and run away.
They found an appropriate spot along the path and then synchronized their stopwatches. That was a pointless thing to do because they didn’t know when exactly a human would appear on the path, but it seemed like a good thing to do anyway. People in the movies seemed to be doing that all the time.
They didn’t have to wait long. This seemed to be the super highway as far as the village was concerned. At exactly the right time the unsuspecting villager walking on the path got a full blast of animal sounds – in stereo!
He dropped the basket he was carrying and rushed away. Baandor and Xiyal picked it up and rushed away to the hiding spot. It had to be Baandor’s treehouse, because the basket would not fit in Xiyal’s home – which was just a hole in the ground.
That was unfortunate for Xiyal, because he could not climb a tree. His mistake was in trusting Baandor. The monkey promised to drop Xiyal’s share down. The important thing now was to urgently hide the basket away in the tree. Or the villager would certainly recover his courage and come looking for it. Xiyal agreed and waited patiently as Baandor opened the basket and examined all the contents with glee.
There were a bunch of bananas! These were Baandor’s favorite fruit.
Xiyal called out “Baandor, can you throw down my share? I’m getting hungry here”
Baandor said. “We’re in luck. We’ve got Bananas!”
Xiyal said he had never heard of Bananas. Were they some kind of vegetable?
“Errr.. yes!” said Baandor. “Here let me give you all of them since you’ve never tried them before”
But that’s not actually what Baandor did. The monkey took every banana, ate the flesh and tossed the peel down to Xiyal.
Truth be told, Xiyal did not like how they tasted. But he ate them all just to avoid offending his friend who seemed to be going Bananas… about the Bananas.
Next, Baandor revealed that the basket contained sugarcane. It was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted, he said.
But again, Xiyal silently disagreed with Baandor. The sugarcane that he tried was in actuality sugarcane that had been chewed to a pulp by his dear friend.
The same thing happened with the yogurt. All that Xiyal got was the clay pot that had contained the yogurt before Baandor finished all of it.
Xiyal went home thinking what an awesome friend he had. I mean Baandor had given him the lion’s share of everything – the bananas, the sugarcane and the yogurt. It was true, the food wasn’t the tastiest but that was probably just human cooking for you.
He thought nothing further of the incident. Until a few days later, Xiyal had the occasion to visit a cousin of his. The cousin offered him a banana. Xiyal was nauseated at the thought of eating another banana, if they were all like the kind he had tried before. He only accepted out of politeness.
But he was in for a shock. When his cousin tossed the peel in the garbage and offered him the flesh, his jaw dropped. And when he actually tasted the banana, he knew that Baandor had been up to some monkey business.
Just to confirm that Baandor was guilty beyond reasonable doubt, Xiyal did a bit of diligence. Through friends and family, he managed to find out what Sugarcane and Yogurt tasted like.
The results confirmed it. Baandor had played a dirty trick on him.
Xiyal thought of ways he could exact his revenge. A few days later when he had perfected his plan, he sat right under the branch of a tree that had a wasp’s nest on it. There was enough distance between him and the nest that he was not in actual danger. But at the same time, he put on a stiff and serious expression on his face so people could see right away that he was on a mission there. And the mission had something to do with the wasps nest right above him.
Just to be extra sure, he put on a hat and uniform both labeled the Xiyal Security Company.
Soon enough, Baandor passed by, just as Xiyal had planned. When he did, he was naturally curious. What was Xiyal doing here, what was with the costume? It wasn’t Halloween, was it?
And what was the thing hanging from the branch above him? He’d never seen anything like it.
“No, no, no,” Xiyal said. “You know food continues to be a problem. So I’m doing an extra job to make ends meet. I set up my own security company. Fortunately I managed to land a contract from the King himself. I’m on duty right now. My job is to guard the King’s amazing new drum! And just to clarify, I mean the musical instrument, not a cylindrical container for storing oil or other fluids”
Well, that only made the Baandor even more curious. He absolutely had to try it out. He appealed to Xiyal. “You know how much I’ve told you about my dream to be a drummer one day. I think I’m going to be as famous as Ringo Starr one day.”
Xiyal appeared to be very reluctant, though internally he was excited that this seemed to be going exactly as he had hoped. The Jackal probably deserved a Filmfare Award for this.
Eventually though he relented, when Baandor called in a favor, for having shared most of the human food with him.
Baandor scampered up the tree and gave the nest a gentle tap. “Oh look,” he told Xiyal excitedly. “It’s no ordinary drum. It makes a very special noise – like a buzz”
“Yes, could you excuse me?” asked Xiyal. “I really need a bathroom break”. He sneaked off without waiting for a reply.
Baandor was suddenly stung in a lot of places by a whole bunch of angry wasps that to him appeared to have materialized out of thin air. He was in great pain and the wasps only stopped stinging him when there was no area left on his body for them to sting.
Xiyal laughed all the way home. And then he got to thinking. This was good sweet revenge. But it wasn’t enough. These things had to be done in threes because this was a folk tale. I mean hadn’t Baandor cheated him out of 3 kinds of food? His trick had been the Banana Revenge.. Now next up was the Sugarcane Revenge and lastly the Yogurt Revenge.
Besides, if he didn’t take immediate action, Baandor might think deeply about the incident and realize the deception. Then it would be harder for Xiyal to trick the Monkey in future. Baandor might even try to take revenge.
So Xiyal planned yet another trick. Again, Xiyal was guarding something on Baandor’s usual morning walk path. What he was guarding was Arum plants, which are a kind of toxic plants, but Xiyal claimed they were a new kind of Sugarcane commissioned by the King. This sugarcane variety was sweeter than anything else anyone had ever tasted before. And that made Baandor curious again. I guess he hadn’t really learned much from the last time his friend was guarding something for the King. He didn’t even confront Xiyal about the drum.
Xiyal was again reluctant when Baandor asked to taste the sugarcane. But again, Xiyal again eventually gave in to his friend’s pleas.
Baandor hastily gobbled up as many Arum plants as he could get his hands on. And pretty soon had to stop, because he started having a reaction to all this.
Baandor rushed off to the Emergency room to seek urgent medical attention. Maybe I have an allergy, he hastily muttered to Xiyal who was having difficulty suppressing laughter.
A few days later, Xiyal decided that this was still not enough. And when Baandor realized the double trick Xiyal had pulled on him, his revenge would be all the worse. So he had to do something preemptive. And it had to be final.
Well, if a trick works well twice, no reason to think it might not work again. So Xiyal again put on the uniform of his security company, and stood guard next to an old disused well. In fact, it had been so long since it was last used that there was big network of cobwebs all over the mouth of the cave. Call it a Well-Wide-Web.
That served Xiyal’s plan perfectly. So when Baandor wandered along again Xiyal claimed that it was a special chair for the Princess. And that he had been commissioned to guard it, even though the King had been very very upset about the job he had done on the Drum and the Sugarcane.
“In fact,” Xiyal said to Baandor, “The King suspected you had something to do with the wasp infestation of the drum, and the fact that his new sugarcane plants were all gone. But I convinced him otherwise”
Baandor pleaded with Xiyal to please let him try out this special chair, this Well-Wide-Web. So that finally Xiyal let him. And when Baandor tried it, he realized a moment too late that maybe he was way heavier than the Princess. He went crashing down to the bottom of the well. Unable to climb out, despite being an expert climber Baandor drowned. And that was the end of him.
And the evil psychopath of a Jackal went home to his family whistling a tune without a shred of guilt about him.
So that’s how the story ends.
A few thoughts on the story.
Xiyal and Baandor are the Assamese names for a Jackal and for a Monkey. Interestingly, the Assamese word for Fox is the same – it’s Xiyal. That sort of explains how I got the animal name wrong at the end of the last episode.
The original story had the Jackal taunt the Monkey at the end of each revenge. And yet the Monkey was foolish enough to fall for Xiyal’s trick again.
After the heist that the two friends pull off together, the two seem to have entirely switched intelligence and gullibility. Now the betrayal by a close friend may explain Xiyal’s personality transformation, but it’s a total mystery what exactly caused the Monkey to become so gullible, not once or twice but three times.
We’ve done Assamese Folk Tales before, in Episode 102 – Assamese Folk Tale – The Witch vs the Animagi and in Episode 35 – The Pied Piper’s Children
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll go back to the Ramayana again. We’ll conclude the Sugriva – Vali fight, and then move on to the next phase in the search for Sita.