In this episode, we’re doing a Kannada folk tale. This one, like the episode from last week, is also a story from the Southern state of Karnataka, though variations of this tale have been heard in a neighboring state. This one is the adventure of a prince who just wants to solve a massive pest problem in his Kingdom. The only way to do that is that he has to go on a quest to get a special flower that only appears when a Princess in a far-away land laughs. The story also features a tree growing inside a giant’s mouth when he was sleeping.
Our story starts with a Kingdom in southern India that had back-to-back massive pest problems. The first one was indeed a standard pest problem with mice. Now, if the King had hired the Pied Piper of Hamelyn everything would have turned out differently. But he didn’t. Mainly because of the risk that the piper might kidnap all of the Kingdom’s children.
So they tried something more creative. They introduced snakes. Everyone knows snakes are fond of mice. And the snakes loved it. To them it was like being placed in an all-you-can-eat buffet. Things worked really well, and people cheered on the King and thanked him for this masterful stroke of genius.
But that didn’t last long. It started first with people finding snakes in their pantry instead of mice. Still they thanked the snakes and moved on. But soon, snakes were everywhere. People were finding them in their sinks, under the bed, in their hair. It was not an experience for the faint of heart.
Things took a nastier turn when many of the snakes turned out to be venomous. They fired the herpetologist who had recommended all the species in the first place. But that was little consolation to people who were winding up in hospitals because of snakebite.
The King tried suggesting introducing an army of mongoose. But his own council voted him down. The King himself had to deal with the snakes in his own bed. He couldn’t figure out a way. And his loss of sleep wasn’t helping. He decided to go off into the forest, hoping for a quiet spot to nap in.
He found a spot, and commanded his soldiers to spread out and stand guard. He had also brought along his son. The King gave the Prince a wooden sword and asked him to go practice somewhere. It was just the King’s luck that he had to babysit this boy today.
Maybe the King was being too condescending, because the Prince’s actions were going to save his life.
No sooner did the King lie down at the foot of a large tree, he fell asleep. A very large and dark shape descended down the tree. It was the King of snakes. Fittingly it wore a cute little crown to easily distinguish it from other snakes. Oh and just for extra measure it had seven heads. Each of the heads wore a little crown indicating the Snakes had a King who had 7 times the usual intellectual capacity of a regular snake.
The seven heads all descended down on the sleeping human King and poised to strike him. When suddenly the Prince jumped in. With his wooden pretend sword.
“Ah, you wouldn’t want to hurt a poor old snake King now, would you?” said the Snake King. The Prince was waving his sword and stabbing the air around the snake King, making it very nervous.
The King continued snoring through all this.
When the Prince didn’t stop, the Snake King invoked the Geneva convention. The Prince, despite his father’s rather low opinion of himself, was rather a bright lad. He got straight As, he won every prize and was the teacher’s pet of every teacher who taught at the school his father paid for.
He knew the Geneva convention, and he promised not to harm the Snake King. He also introduced himself, Prince Rajkumar which really translated from the local language is Prince Prince.
The Snake King was called Nagraj. He was quick to point out how his name was not redundant. At which, Rajkumar pointed to his sword to remind the Snake King who was in charge here.
The Prince suggested they talk terms. The Snake King said all he was trying to do was to get a glimpse at his human counterpart, he wasn’t going to bite. His snake people could learn a lot from this close encounter with a human King.
“His snake people? Did he have tens of thousands of them?” the Prince asked suspiciously.
Nagraj nodded.
“So they are the ones infesting my Kingdom and the palace too?” Rajkumar asked.
The Snake King nodded again.
“And you have the power to call them all off if you choose to?” asked the Prince.
Nagraj shuffled his non-existent feet, and said “Well, about that….. It’s a little awkward really, but I can’t call them off. I’m supposed to be able to. I’m their King and they should listen to me. But I can’t actually control them”
“And why not?” asked the Prince.
“It’s just that I’ve been having these splitting headaches recently and I can’t sleep. It’s disturbing my whole day and I’m losing control and I can’t manage any of my ”
“Oh no! Have you seen a doctor?”
“Yes, I did. He said the only way to cure my headache was to get a flower from the mouth of the Princess who lives seven Kingdoms away”
“Sounds like a quack to me,” Rajkumar said.
“Yeah, but it’s medieval India, what do you expect?” Nagraj replied.
“Have you tried a second opinion?” the Prince prodded.
“I did, and a third and a fourth,” the Snake King replied. “But they were unanimous.”
“So why don’t you do something about getting that flower then?”
“I am doing something about it. I am talking to you”
“Me? How can I help you? And what’s in it for me anyway?”
“A wife, potentially,” Nagraj replied. “The Princess, whose name is Rajkumari, was voted the most eligible bachelorette by the Royal Magazine, and you are yourself a fine young bachelor. Her name is redundant too, so that should suit you just fine. And most importantly for you if my headache goes away, I can control all my snake-people. I can take them all to Florida, I hear Disneyland is full of giant mice. Even though they might be wearing red shorts, they should still be edible”
“Say nothing more,” Rajkumar replied. “You had me at wife”
With that, Rajkumar got general directions from the Snake as to the location of the Princess Rajkumari’s Kingdom and headed off in that direction immediately.
It was a long walk across seven kingdoms, and the rate at which he was going it was going to take him weeks, if not months to get there. The rate at which news traveled in those days meant there was a real possibility that when Rajkumar got there, he would find that the Rajkumari had long married and had kids and even grandkids by now. But he hoped for the best and carried on.
When he was hungry, he ate berries and roots he could find and when he was thirsty, he found rivers and lakes.
It was during one such pit stop at a lake that he noticed something. It was a bunch of ants in a little boat made of leaves. It was cute how the ants had named their leaf boat. They had called it the Titanic, which was reasonable considering how much larger the boat was compared to their little ant-bodies. He stared at them with fascination and amusement. Until the boat capsized. All the little ants were panicking and were going to drown. Rajkumar decided that he must step in, even though he hadn’t received an official SOS from them. He jumped into the water and made a mad dash for the site of the wreck. Quickly, and carefully he picked up each ant and placed it on his hands and when he had collected the lot, waded back to the shore with them.
The ants were so grateful they didn’t even bite him. They thanked him with their tiny little voices, and promised to do him a good turn one day. All he had to do was to think of them and they would show up. That puzzled Rajkumar as he didn’t think ants were telepathic, but they convinced him that they would somehow get the message. Didn’t matter how.
Rajkumar wished them luck with their next boat and moved on.
A few days later he came upon a very strange scene. There was a giant, lying down in the middle of the forest. Apparently, he had been sleeping there after a hearty meal. A bird flying overhead had accidentally dropped a seed from a tamarind plant right into the sleeping giant’s open mouth. In a very unscientific move, the seed had now become a full size tamarind tree. When he woke up, the giant found he couldn’t even budge. The best he could do is to make some gurgling noises around the tree that was growing out of his mouth.
Rajkumar came up on the scene and realized this giant needed help. And the obvious way to help was to chop down the tree. So the Prince got to work. The story doesn’t explain what tool the Prince used to complete his mission, but let’s just assume he borrowed it from the nearest Home Depot. It took several hours, but when he was done, the Giant was able to get up and then simply spit out the Stump and roots that remained.
The Giant thanked Rajkumar, and said he could help Rajkumar as many times as necessary. All Rajkumar had to do was to think of him, and the Giant would appear.
Telepathy again? Wondered Rajkumar. But the Giant wasn’t sure either.
He also wasn’t sure when Rajkumar asked if the Giant would appear instantly or whether there was a speed-of-light delay? The Giant thought it was impossible to know, because in his frame of reference, he would appear instantly the moment he knew that Rajkumar thought of him, but maybe Rajkumar would perceive a delay? The Giant suggested they leave that for the physicists and assume it just works by magic.
Rajkumar thanked the Giant and moved on. The rest of the journey was without incident.
When he got there, he was relieved to learn that Princess Rajkumari was still an eligible bachelorette. And there was a contest, the winner of which would win her heart in marriage.
“I had better try my best,” thought Rajkumar, “but also it’s a shame she doesn’t get to pick her husband, and a contest decides the winner”
Rajkumar introduced himself to the King, Rajkumari’s dad, and explained that he wanted to participate. The contest turned out to have no other contestants besides himself. Because dozens of princes had tried and failed.
It was soon clear to Rajkumar why. The King set three tasks for the Prince.
The first was to lock the Prince in a giant room filled with thousands of sacks of something. The King explained that all the sacks contained a mixture of Rice and Grains. All that was asked for was to separate everything into a rice pile and a grains pile.
“Why did you get them mixed in the first place?” asked Rajkumar. “And how come there aren’t any piles already. Did any of the contestants before me even attempt this task?”
“No, no one attempted them. When they saw all the sacks, they gave up. As to why we got them mixed, we made a mistake and ordered 1000 sacks of the wrong product on Amazon home delivery. And now, Amazon isn’t accepting a return on these. Anyway, I suggest you get started, you have very little time if we have to get all this done by 7 in the morning”
“So I have just 12 hours to do all this?” asked Rajkumar shocked
“Of course not!” said the King. “You have 11 hours. We switched to Daylight Savings Time yesterday. We haven’t adjusted the clock in this room yet”
With that, the King departed and left Rajkumar in despair.
Despair soon changed to hope when Rajkumar thought of his friends, the ants. They instantly appeared before him. And what’s more they brought friends. A lot of friends.
Rajkumar quickly explained the goal, and soon, millions or maybe even billions of ants were tearing into the sacks,and carrying grains into the two piles.
When the King came by to check on progress the next morning, he was shocked that the job was done. Rajkumar left the details vague enough to avoid admitting that he hadn’t done the job, but his insect friends had.
Rajkumar slept well that day and was prepared for the next big task. He was taken to another huge room, which had hundreds of huge containers of Rice and Buttermilk. His job was to eat it all by the next morning.
Well, there was no controversy here. Rajkumar immediately thought of the Giant, and he appeared. And at a good time too, because the Giant was hungry and ready to eat! He not only finished all the food, but poked around here and there looking for desserts. He didn’t find any, but went away anyway when Rajkumar urged him to. The Prince didn’t want his future in-laws and even his wife to know he had had outside help.
The third and final task the next day was to ring a massive bell, the size of a mountain. The bell was huge and kept near the Kingdom’s borders. When rung, it could be heard for seven kingdoms. The problem was the bell was so heavy, no one could ring it.
Again, it was the Giant that Rajkumar thought of, when he went on his solo quest and found the bell. The Giant had no such problem and he was able to easily ring the bell.
When the bell was heard back in Princess Rajkumari’s Kingdom, wedding preparations began almost immediately. Which was great, because now Rajkumar was in a hurry to get back to his own Kingdom. He had to sit patiently through the festivities though.
When they were done, Rajkumar and Rajkumari headed back. All this while, Rajkumar observed that the Princess hadn’t laughed at all.
He was puzzled over that, but first decided to come clean. He told Rajkumari his whole story. Rajkumari heard it patiently. And then said, “You’ve been had”
“What?” asked the Prince shocked
“Think about it, my dear husband. I have never had a flower fall from my mouth. I also don’t recall laughing but if it had happened when I was a baby, my parents would have mentioned that, don’t you think?”
Rajkumar said nothing.
“Now think, what’s Nagraj’s real reason to send you on this quest? Think he really couldn’t control his people? What if I told you he only wanted to get you out of the scene. You, who are the only person to ever challenge or threaten him. What better way to destroy the Kingdom than when its only sensible prince is away. And now that I think about it, I’m not sure you’re all that sensible. Did you extract a promise from him not to harm the citizens while you were away?”
“No,” admitted Rajkumar, “I hadn’t really thought of that”
Rajkumari pointed out that had Rajkumar even stopped to think about Nagraj’s story, he could have found the flaws. One big one was evidence that she was right – 4 out of 4 doctors had provided an identical diagnosis of Nagraj’s condition and its cure. How likely was it that it wasn’t a made up story.
Rajkumari would have been right of course in the real world. But this is not the real world. It’s a folk tale world with happy endings and a Snake King who keeps his word and frees Rajkumar’s Kingdom from his coils in exchange for a flower.
So when Rajkumari laughed derisively at Rajkumar, three flowers did in fact fall out of her mouth. The middle one was the one Nagraj had asked for, so Rajkumar took it and gave it to Nagraj.
Nagraj withdrew after getting the flower. The people were happy with Rajkumar despite all the deaths that had happened in the months it had taken Rajkumar on his quest.. The Princess continued to laugh and supply the Kingdom with sweet smelling flowers.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The idea of animals coming back to help accomplish seemingly impossible tasks is something we have encountered before. Though in today’s story, it’s unusual that the Giant was summoned twice.
I don’t normally do back-to-back stories in the same category. I usually mix them up. But someone specifically requested this story, so I’ve made 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 set up 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.
Here are other Kannada Folk Tales we have covered before
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll cover a Vikram and Betaal episode that some of you have asked for