Vikram-Betaal – The Final Problem – {Ep.276}

Today’s episode is the final Vikram-Betaal story. We’ll see how the Betaal finally stumps Vikram with a very complicated family tree. And the framing narrative will conclude with an assassination attempt!

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 back to the world of Vikram and Betaal. 

Before we jump into today’s story, I just want to repeat the announcement from last time. In just 2 more weeks, we will be completing 5 years of this podcast. And at that point, this podcast is going to go on a hiatus. I will not be releasing any more new episodes.

From the bottom of my heart thank you to each and every one of you. Whether you’ve been a long time listener or whether you’ve only just started tuning in – your support, feedback and engagement mean the world to me, and I’m deeply grateful and humbled by all your love and encouragement.

While I’m away doing my regular Narada duties – you know, visiting Gods and Goddesses, playing concerts in Swarg and so on, feel free to catch up on any of the 300+ episodes you may have missed, and stay connected with me on social media. You just might hear from me soon about a new project I’m starting on.

And now, let’s jump back into the world of Vikram and Betaal. We’ve covered several Vikram-Betaal stories before. You might have heard that there are 25 Vikram Betaal stories. After all, these stories are sometimes called the Betaal Pacchisi. Pachisi literally means 25. In the dozen or so Vikram and Betaal episodes we’ve done, we have covered most of them. You see some of these stories repeat, and though the Betaal might have enjoyed boring Vikram by repetition, I do not intend to bore you.

Each of the Vikram Betaal stories stands alone. So if you have not heard the previous episodes that is totally fine. The only info you need is the framing narrative and you absolutely need it because it’s very relevant to today’s show. But not to worry, I’ll summarize it for you right now. You can also check out the links in the show notes and on the site sfipodcast.com if you like.

Raja Vikramaditya, or Vikram, or Vik as I shall call him, was a very well known and well respected King. Vik had murdered his own brother through a particularly painful method in order to become the King. But that was almost a rite of passage in that day and age. So, his people not just appreciated him but adored him. In addition to the taxes they already paid, they give him gifts. One of these gift givers was a Rishi, or a wise man. The Rishi gave Vik a mango everyday. Vik thought nothing of it, until one day by accident he discovered that each of those mangoes contained a massive and valuable gem inside. The boost to the King’s treasure was immense enough that Vik felt obligated to pay this mysterious Rishi back.

The Rishi didn’t want much in return. He explained to Vik that he wanted Vik’s help in completing a very special prayer, and the only missing ingredient was a Betaal – which he expected Vik to fetch for him.

If you haven’t heard the term before – a Betaal is a reanimated corpse. Some early members of the British Raj clumsily translated the term Betaal into Vampire. You could say the term Zombie is closer, except that Betaals could fly. And they could talk without mumbling and groaning for brains, as Hollywood would have you believe. Betaals mostly were in the habit of hanging out in Peepal trees, by hanging down from them – like bats. The Rishi wanted Vik to go Betaal-shopping in the cemetery, which had several Peepal trees, with several Betaals ripe for the plucking. 

The Rishi did not explain why, but Vik had to fetch the Betaal strictly in the middle of the night, and he had to go all alone. Vik was still grateful for the massive wealth boost, so he readily agreed to the terms and conditions. What did he have to fear in his own kingdom? So what if it it was midnight on a moonless night?

Vik climbed a tree, and grabbed the Betaal easily enough. But when he was making his way across the cemetery towards the mysterious Rishi, the Betaal told him a story. It was a story that had a question at the end. A question that Vik could not resist answering. The only problem was that whenever Vik opened his mouth to speak, the Betaal was able to escape and fly away. This happened again and again. Vik wasn’t learning from experience and wasn’t keeping his mouth shut. But it wasn’t just him. The Betaal wasn’t learning either, because he kept going back to exactly the same spot as before. Which meant Vik had no trouble recapturing the Betaal. This happened 25 times – the Betaal told him 25 stories and always with the same outcome. Except for the last story. And that’s where we are today

“We’re almost at the end Vikram. It’s been an incredible journey so far,” the Betaal said.

“What journey? We’re barely ten steps from the peepal tree,” Vikram thought, but did not say. It’s a good thing he didn’t say anything otherwise speaking would have allowed the Betaal to escape again.

“Yessir! We’re 24 stories and 24 questions down! And you’ve answered every single question correctly. Now for the last one,”

This count seemed off to Vikram. But he still kept silent.

The Betaal launched into his story.

Once there was a King, a Queen and a Princess. They did not live happily in a Kingdom – mainly because the King did not live anymore, and the Queen and Princess were kicked out of it. The King’s evil brother hid a poisonous scorpion in the King’s bed and got him that way.

If the Betaal was trying to provoke a reaction from Vikram, he was doing a good job.

Vikram resisted the urge to speak up sharply in response. It wasn’t just that Vikram had gotten rid of his brother and become king in a similar way. The urge Vikram had to fight was to object to the word poisonous. The scorpion was venomous. Big difference there, and the Betaal shouldn’t have used the wrong word.

The Betaal continued, completely ignoring the twisted expression on Vikram’s face. 

Poor mother and daughter. They took refuge in the only place they could – the dark forest. And yet, one surprisingly optimistic take on characters on this show taking refuge in a dark forest is that they’ve almost always survived. So Rani and Rajkumari had reason to hope that all would turn out okay. By the way, in keeping with the tradition of this show the characters are named for the roles they play. Rani and Rajkumari are Hindi words for Queen and Princess.

Rani and Rajkumari were tired, hungry and thirsty. Somehow they kept walking. Until they came to a lovely little clearing and a little hut, straight out of Snow White. Except this home they found wasn’t occupied by 7 dwarves, but by two men – a father and a son. They were woodcutters, and not diamond miners. Woodcutting was in demand, so they had done well for themselves. The abundant supply of wood all around them helped. And with the excess lumber they constructed a pretty little cottage, and all kinds of wooden furniture.

The father, Pita, and son, Beta welcomed Rani and Rajkumari in. They were great hosts! They offered the women food, a change of clothing, a comfortable bed to sleep in. If they could they’d have offered capital to raise an army and take the Kingdom back. But for now, food, clothing and shelter would have to do.

The women recovered, but they didn’t simply move on. The woodcutter father-son duo invited Rani and Rajkumari to stay with them as long as they liked. And that seemed like a dashed sensible idea. Time went by, and soon love blossomed all over the cottage. Only, the pairings weren’t what you might expect. You see, the son, Beta got engaged to Rani, and his father, Pita, got engaged to Rajkumari. Complicated stuff. But they all were fine with it.

The weddings went off without a hitch. Everything was just fine, until two things happened – more or less the same time. Beta and Rani had a baby, and Pita and Rajkumari had a baby too.

“So now Vikram, tell me this,” the Betaal concluded. “What is the relationship between the two babies?”

Vikram was stumped. Rajkumari was Rani’s daughter, but also Rani’s stepmother. So Rajkumari’s baby should be Rani’s sister, but the baby was also Rani’s grandchild. And Rani’s own baby was her mother-in-law’s sister, or her aunt. And that meant Rani was her own grandma.

There was a long period of silence.

“Well, what do you think?” The Betaal prompted again.

“My head hurts,” Vikram complained. It really did. There was no proper answer to this question. Were the two babies, cousins, aunts, grandparents, great grandparents? They might be everything!

What was more surprising is that the Betaal did not fly away. He stayed on Vikram’s back

“You didn’t fly away. You’re still on my back!” Vikram exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, yes. I only fly away if you speak and if your answer is correct”

“So are you telling me, that if I had simply pretended to not know the answer to one of your other questions you’d have stayed put? I could have been back in bed hours ago! And here I am traipsing through cemeteries tripping over lord knows what”

“Listen, Vikram. It’s not all so simple. If you had taken me to your mysterious rishi earlier, you wouldn’t be in bed, you’d be six feet under”

This was a new phrase for Vikram so he struggled to understand it. It didn’t help that Betaal tried to explain it with even more confusing phrases – like pushing up daisies, sleeping with the fishes, dead as a doornail, and finally getting his point across by saying dead. Vikram would be dead if the Rishi got his way.

Vikram couldn’t believe that the Rishi had evil intent. “He gave me so many jewels! They doubled my treasury!”

“You mean his treasury. Listen to me Vikram, he intends to take over your Kingdom. He just needs a Betaal to complete his ritual, and then he’ll be all-powerful.”

Vikram wanted to know how the Betaal knew this. So the Betaal explained.

“Let me tell you a story Vikram”

Vikram was immediately curious if this was going to have a question too. Betaal said, no. This was his personal life story, and it was very relevant to what was about to happen. There was no question. But the Betaal could slip in a question at the end just to make Vikram more comfortable.

Once there was an ordinary couple that longed to have a child. They did what most childless couples have done on this show – they prayed. What they did differently, was to pray to a sorcerer instead of to the Gods. The sorcerer told them that he’d give them not one, but two children! He didn’t want a fee, or a reward for this. The only condition was that the sorcerer would be in charge of the twin boys’ education after they were born.

The sorcerer deliberately controlled the flow of information to the two boys. In one of the earliest examples of an A/B test, the sorcerer made one of the boys learn everything but mistreated him. And the other boy was treated very well, but was given only the most basic knowledge. Just enough to read and speak and survive in a cruel ancient Indian world.

Anyway, the first boy – the mistreated one with the encyclopedic knowledge was Betala. The sorcerer killed him to gain some powers. And now, he was going to do the same to Vikram. Because that sorcerer from Betala’s story was now disguised as a rishi and was waiting for Vikram and the Betala at the other end of the crematorium. 

By sacrificing the Betala’s former human self, the sorcerer had become powerful enough to create large rubies out of thin air and disguise them as mangoes. And now, by sacrificing Vikram he was going to become powerful enough to rule the world.

“Not if I sacrifice him first!” roared back Vikram.

“That’s the spirit,” applauded Betaal. “But how exactly, Vikram? Do you have any ideas?”

Vikram didn’t know how. Direct attack might be difficult if the sorcerer had magical powers. But Betaal had an idea and he explained it.

Several minutes later, Vikram finally arrived at the point where the sorcerer had a big fire going in front of a statue of a Goddess.

“What took you so long?” the sorcerer asked. 

“The Betaal. He was a slippery one,” the King explained. 

“Ah yes, I remember this one. I might have run into him before he became a Betaal. What a lucky coincidence.”

The sorcerer snatched the Betaal’s body off of Vikram’s back. Swiftly he dumped it into the fire where it seemed to vanish instantly.

“Ah yes, this has gone swimmingly!” the sorcerer said. “Now the only thing left is to seek the Goddess’s blessing. Kings first! Oh and take off your sword, the Goddess might be offended. Here, you better let me hold it. Don’t want to leave it on the ground and get dirty.”

It sounded just fine to Vikram, so he handed the sorcerer his sword. Standing fully erect before the Goddess, the King said. “O Goddess, I seek your blessings!”

The sorcerer had to explain “No, no, not like that. You have to get on the floor, face down, palms outstretched.”

Vikram only gave him a puzzled glance in reply.

The sorcerer was now shocked. Was it possible that Vikram didn’t know how to pray to a Goddess? The degree of ignorance was appalling, but right now the bigger problem was that if Vikram did not actually lie down on the ground to pray, how could the sorcerer chop off the King’s head with his own sword?

“Do you really not know how to properly pray to a Goddess?” he asked the King.

And Vikram slowly shook his head. “Maybe you could show me?”

“Oh, all right,” the sorcerer said, and laid down. “See here, my feet are aligned, I’m on my belly and fully stretched out. Notice the position of my hands, palms together pointing towards the goddess and my face is….”

That’s about as far as he got. Because Vikram had quickly seized the sword that the sorcerer had dropped and chopped off the sorcerer’s head. 

“Serves him right,” a voice said behind Vikram. He quickly whirled around to see… the Betaal.

“I thought you were destroyed in the fire,” Vikram said. But the Betaal explained that that was just temporary. He’d been resurrected by the destruction of the sorcerer.

Vikram observed that it was strange how the Betaal came back as a Betaal and not the human that he originally was. The Betaal pointed out that it was a good thing. Because now, as a Betaal he could grant Vikram’s wish.

Could I wish for more wishes? Vikram asked.

Betaal said there were no rules. Sure, he could.

So Vikram wished for the ability to summon the Betaal whenever he needed him to do something for him. 

Well, that’s it. That’s how the Vikram and Betaal series concludes. Later, Vikram was able to summon the Betaal at multiple points in the Singhasan Battisi.

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

The situation in Betaal’s final question has often been referenced in the entertainment industry. There was a Bollywood movie based on this idea. +Though to a celestial being like me it feels like just yesterday. It was called Ek Nayi Paheli, and it’s based on Betaal’s final story. Well technically it’s based on an earlier Tamil movie that is based on Betaal’s final story. But you get the idea.

There’s a song from the 1940s called I’m my own grandpa on this theme as well. That song was based on something that the famous author Mark Twain described in one of his books. 

Previous Vikram-Betaal episodes are linked in the show notes and on the site sfipodcast.com. Check them out:

https://sfipodcast.com/category/vikram-betaal

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll skip far ahead in the Mahabharata and do a story about the Pandavas, and their adventures in the wilderness while displaced from the comforts of palace life.

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The music is from Purple Planet.

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