Folktales from Bengal (9 page)

Then he started to eat
his way into the elephants flesh. And he burrowed so much, that he
entered the elephant’s head. The elephant got very ill. It ran
around from one corner of the king’s garden to another, and banged
its head on walls. The king called the best physicians in the
kingdom.

If only they knew that
there was an ant in its head, they would have smeared its feet with
sugar and honey, and the ant would have crawled out. But they did
not. They fed it all sorts of medicine, and still the elephant
died.

Now they had a big, fat,
and very, very dead elephant. The king had a strange dream that
night. He dreamt that his elephant came up to him and said, “I
worked faithfully for you for years, my king. Now take my body to
Ganges, and give me a burial at sea.”

The next morning, the
king ordered his men to take the elephant to Ganges. Three hundred
men tied a rope around the elephant’s corpse, and dragged it
towards the river. It was a hot day. After every few feet, they
stopped to rest, and panted like dogs.

A cook and his servant
were passing by. The servant looked at the people and said,
“Phooie, an itsy bitsy elephant like that, and three hundred men
are making a scene to pull it. Why, I could take it to Ganges all
by myself if I had to.”

The three hundred men
jumped up to get him at this. They tied him up and dragged him to
the king. Not that he protested.

The king was sulking
about his elephant. He looked at the men coming back, and asked.
“So, have you taken my elephant to Ganges?”

The men replied, “All in
due time. But first, you have to punish this liar. He says that he
can drag your elephant to the river all by himself.”

The king’s eyebrows hit
the ceiling in astonishment. “Really, can you do something like
that?”

“
Of course,
if your majesty but asks me to. But first, I need to have a little
snack.”

“
Somebody get
this man a loaf of bread and a bowl of dal. I got to see this,”
said the king.

“
A loaf of
bread? An ant can eat that. To pull an elephant you have to eat a
bit more,” said the servant.

“
What do you
want?’

“
Nothing
much. A ton of rice, a couple of goats, and a bucket of
curd.”

“
I’ll give
you that. But you’ll have to eat it all.”

And so, it was done. The
man ate up a tonne of rice, a couple of goats and a bucket of curd,
and had a nice little nap.

Then he spread out his
towel over the elephant to make a nice little bundle, put the
bundle with the elephant at the end of a stick, and walked towards
Ganges, whistling. The king and his men gawked at him all the
while, until he disappeared from sight.

After walking for a long
while in the sun, the servant got very thirsty. He saw that there
was a hut near a pond, and a little girl was sitting
inside.

“
Hello,
little girl. Can you give me some water?”

“
My father
told me not to talk to strangers.” The girl replied.

“
Such
manners! Fine, if you don’t give me water, I’ll take
it.”

He went down into the
pond, and began to guzzle it down. First he reached the size of an
elephant, then a hillock, and finally there was no more water left
in the pond. But he was having some difficulty keeping the water
down. So he ate a banyan tree, which stuck in his throat like a
cork, so the water could not get out.

After this, feeling very
happy with himself, he lay down beside the pond, and fell asleep.
His belly rose up like a mountain. The girl’s father was working in
the field when he spotted the mountain-like thing, and came running
home.

The girl told her what
happened. “Father, what an evil man he is! I didn’t give him water,
and so he drank our pond up. And now he is sleeping like nothing’s
wrong.”

They were walking towards
the servant as they were talking. When they reached close, the girl
yelled. “Oh my. What a horrible smell. Look father, he has a dead
rat or something stuck in a bundle in there.”

She took the bundle,
turned it around once, then threw it far into the air, and it
landed straight into the heart of Ganges.

And the girl’s father, he
mustered up his strength to give a mighty kick to the servant’s
belly. All the water came gushing out, flooding his
home.

The servant woke up,
laughing, and the farmer started to laugh to. They hugged each
other and said. “What a strong man you are. We should
wrestle.”

So they decided to
wrestle over who is stronger. To decide the winner, they needed a
judge.

They were walking towards
the market when they saw an old hunch-backed woman walking towards
them, carrying a basket on her hump. She was taking lunch, dried
fishes, for her nephew who worked in the fields, herding the king’s
seven hundred cows.

The woman heard of their
problem and said, “Why do you need to go to the market. Just hop
into my basket of fish and fight. The one who falls
loses.”

The fight began. It went
on and on and on, and there were kicks and punches and pokes and
jabs. But neither could make the other fall.

Meanwhile, there was a
horrible kite in the country. It flew away with everything, cows,
goats, and anything that was not tied down. The old woman was its
arch enemy, and it wanted to steal her basket.

This day, the kite was
flying to get its prey. The woman’s nephew heard the sound of his
wings, and took all his seven hundred cows in his pocket and ran
for it. He went to his home, locked the door, and sighed in relief,
saying, “Almost got me today.”

The kite saw the basket
on the back of the old woman. He dived and finally, took the basket
high up. The men inside did not like the interruption, so they
punched the kite, who dropped the basket, and resumed the
fight.

Meanwhile, the king’s
daughter in the country was sunbathing in her balcony, and her maid
was combing her hair. Suddenly, something fell in her
eye.

“
Maid,
something fell in my eye, take it out.”

The maid twisted a corner
of her cloth, and put it in her eye, carefully taking out a tiny
little basket.

The princess cried in
delight, ‘What is this? I must know.”

The tiny basket passed
from hand to hand, but nobody could tell what it was. Finally they
called in the scientists, who put it under a microscope, and said,
“It’s a small basket. There are a few fishes inside, and two men
are wrestling.

In an ancient village in
Bengal there lived a very poor farmer. He loved his son so much,
that he tried to give him everything he could afford, and
everything that the child wanted. And thus, the child was growing
up to be very unruly, and his wants knew no bounds.

The land owner’s son was
once passing in front of the farmer’s house on a horse. The
farmer’s son saw that, and went straight to his father.

“
Father, I
want a horse.”

The father tried to
reason. “I am a poor man, son. Where would I get a
horse?”

But the son wouldn’t
listen. He shouted. He screamed. Then he shouted and screamed. Then
he stomped his floor on the ground. Just when everyone thought he
was tired, he started to shout again. When this didn’t work, he
broke his father’s hukka. When all these stopped working, he
stopped eating, and said, “I ain’t eating nothing until you get me
a horse.”

The farmer was in a
pickle. His son wouldn’t eat at all. So he decided he would try and
buy a horse. He gathered up all the money he had saved, and went to
the market.

There, he asked the horse
seller, “How much for your horse?”

The horse seller didn’t
even look at him and said, “Fifty bucks.”

The farmer looked into
his bundle. He had five bucks. There was no hope of buying the
horse, and he walked towards home, his head hanging low.

Halfway to his house, he
sat down under a tree, and began to rest. He had nearly dozed off,
when he heard two merchants arguing.

The first man said. “This
project is going to earn me a lot of cash.”

The second man said, “All
that is going to earn you is a horse’s egg.”

Horses don’t lay eggs.
That’s why the phrase, “a horse’s egg”, means zero. But the farmer
was not as educated and smart as most people, so he thought that
there was indeed something as a horse’s egg.

He began to ask people
around, “Can you tell me where I can get a horse’s egg?”

A very wicked man heard
him, and said, “Come to my house. I will give you a horse’s egg.
But it is not cheap.”

The farmer said, “I only
have five bucks on me.”

The man looked like he
was deep in thought, and said, “Fine. It’s a deal then. But only
because I like your accent.”

The man took the farmer
to his house, and gave him a melon. He said, “This is a good
horse-egg. Don’t break it before you get home. Otherwise the horse
is going to run away.”

The farmer was now
happily coming back home with his melon. The melon had a crack on
it, and he could see the red inside. He thought, “I must keep an
eye on it. Otherwise, the steed is going to escape. I must not
sleep. If it gets out, I am going to tie it up with this piece of
rope, and drag it to my barn, and tie it there.”

Thinking of all these
things, the farmer reached a river. Suddenly, he felt very thirsty.
He kept the melon by the bank, and went down into the river to
drink.

Meanwhile, a fox had
spotted the melon lying around, and started to eat it. As the
farmer was done drinking the water, the fox was just about done
eating the melon. It was near dusk, and there was little light in
the village path. When the farmer looked back, he saw something
small and fast running away into the forest, leaving the broken
melon.

“
Oh my, the
steed is escaping!” he cried, and ran after it.

But it’s not easy to
chase a fox. It ran through every nook and cranny of the forest,
and the farmer got very tired running after it. He saw a hut in the
middle of the forest, and went to the hut to ask for
shelter.

An old woman lived in the
hut with her granddaughter. The old woman knew that there was a
tiger that lurked behind the hut hoping to get her or her
granddaughter. So she never let her out of the hut after
dark.

The farmer was staying on
the balcony of the hut, and told the granddaughter about the
runaway horse. The granddaughter wanted to hear the whole story,
but before he could finish, the grandmother said, “No more stories.
Come inside, both of you. Or you’ll get eaten by a tiger or a
smiger or something.”

As usual, the tiger was
lurking behind the hut when he heard the words. The word ‘smiger’
struck him as strange. The more he thought about it, the more
scared he got. A tiger, or a smiger. He wondered what kind of a
monster the smiger was. After a while, he got so scared, that he
hid behind a bush in the hut’s front-yard, and lay
shivering.

The farmer could not
sleep in the night, wondering where his horse was. In the early
morning, he got out to see if it was lightening up outside. He saw
the silhouette of the tiger in the bush, and thought, “There’s my
steed.” He jumped up on it, and put his cloth over its face, so it
could not see.”

The tiger was terrified.
His worst fears had come true. “The smiger has got me,” he thought.
He could not see it, but knew what a horrible monster it must have
been to hunt even a tiger. So he ran for his life.

The farmer held on
tightly, hoping that when there was enough light in the morning, he
would find his way home, and ride the horse there. But when morning
came about, he was shocked to find a tiger under him instead of a
horse. His hairs stood on edge, as the tiger, for some reason, kept
yelling, “Smiger, smiger.” Everyone knew that the only thing worse
than a tiger, was a mad tiger. He began to work his mind to get out
of this mess.

They were passing under a
banyan tree with a low hanging vine. He grabbed the vine and
climbed up on top. But he was still not out of trouble. The tiger
could not see, so it thrashed about hopelessly for a while, and
then came to rest under the same tree. Then it began to yell to
other tigers for help.

Soon, a few more tigers
came under the tree. An elderly tiger asked, “Who tied this cloth
around you?”

The tiger said, “It was a
horrible creature. It climbed on my back, and tied my eyes. I could
not shake it off, such strong was its grip. I promised it that we
will arrange a great feast on its honour, and then only it let me
go.”

The feast began. And
unfortunately, it began under the tree itself, where the farmer was
hiding. The farmer was shivering behind the leaves, as hundreds of
tigers brought in dead deer, rabbits, foxes and goats, piling them
up under the tree.

By this time, the farmer
was shivering so much, that the branch started to shake. A tiger
saw that, and asked, “What’s that up there?”