Not one more, not one less!

One day Akbar and his wise counselor Birbal were taking a stroll around the kingdom. Emperor Akbar enjoyed such outing with Birbal as Birbal was quick witted and therefore liked to tease him with strange questions. Birbal, on his part, knew how to deal with the questions and this kept them happy in each others' company.

As the duo was walking, Akbar suddenly looked skywards and asked Birbal how many crows were there in the kingdom. Birbal smiled to himself, before replying to the Emperor’s question. 

“Jahanpannah” said Birbal in a very innocent tone, “there were exactly sixty eight thousand four hundred and forty four crows in our kingdom when I last counted them.”

Now it was Akbar’s turn to suppress his smile before pursuing the matter.

“Birbal,” said Akbar, in a tone that matched Birbal’s. “How are you so certain about the count?”

Birbal took only a second to reply. “Jahanpannah, please send your soldiers to count the crows in your majesty’s kingdom. They will find the count to be accurate” said Birbal, brimming with confidence.

“What if there are more?” asked Akbar to test his minister further.

While some crows are on a holiday away, the others are tourists!

Unperturbed, Birbal replied that the new ones are those that are on a holiday from the neighbouring kingdom.

“Oh” said the King, still not satisfied. “And what if the crows are lesser in number? How do you account for the shortage?” teased Akbar.

“That’s simple your majesty. Some of the crows from our kingdom have accepted invitations extended to them by their friends from the neighbouring kingdom and are holidaying with them abroad, Shah Alam” concluded a witty Birbal.

How does it matter who questions you or what the question is? 

Humour can cut through your opposition like hot knife over butter!

A King is only as good as his ministers are!

King Adiveera was having a leisurely chat with his ministers. He enjoyed having healthy debates with his ministers every now and then and told them that a King’s strength depends on the soldiers and the power of his army!

There was a big uproar followed by chatter among the ministers. In the end one of the ministers stood up and spoke on behalf of all of them. He said that the ministers contributed to the strategies and internal peace and this makes a king more powerful.

King Adiveera wanted to test his ministers some more. So, in a teasing voice, he said that the strategies don’t work if the soldiers are not good. The ministers were on the verge of giving up when Vidur walked in.

He saw the look on the faces of the ministers and instantly knew that the King had won one more of the arguments. He asked one of the ministers what the matter was. The minister explained the entire debate session to Vidur, in a rather monotonous and lack-luster manner.

Vidur smiled at the King. He knew that King Adiveera was a great admirer of Emperor Akbar. He turned towards the King and asked him who the greatest King was in his opinion.

King Adiveera knew that Vidur was setting a trap and tried evading the question. But Vidur was insistent. Finally Adiveera gave in and mentioned the name of Akbar, the great.

“Your Majesty, Emperor Akbar has left a very deep impression in our minds”, Vidur reasoned. “He rose to fame and came to be known as Akbar – the great not because of the battles that he won, but because of the tolerance shown by him.” Vidur waited for his King to respond. But Adiveera was listening intently at the arguments placed forward by the young Vidur.

Vidur continued. “Your majesty, whenever we think of Akbar, we think of Birbal too. Birbal’s quick thinking saved Akbar from taking impulsive decisions. So is not Birbal the reason for Akbar’s greatness?” asked Vidur.

King Adiveera was delighted at the ability of the young lad and gleefully accepted his defeat.

A donkey’s burden

How many of us can walk up to our superior and tell him/her that he/she is nothing better than a donkey and make get away with it?

Well, there was one man who could do it and convincingly. It was none other than Birbal.

One day, the Emperor went to a river along with his two sons. Birbal, as always, accompanied the Emperor. Suddenly Akbar decided to have a bath in the river. His sons too were tempted to follow their father.The threesome entered the river, making Birbal the clothes hangar. Birbal stood on the bank of the river, with royal clothes on his ministerial shoulders.

The very sight made the king laugh and he quipped to Birbal that he looked like the washer man with a donkey’s load on his shoulder. On hearing their father’s comment, the two boys started laughing. The King joined them and as the three of them were having fun at Birbal’s cost, Birbal stood silently.

He remained calm and unperturbed. He did not allow the king’s remarks to anger him. He decided to respond with nonchalance. He told the king that the washer man was responsible for only one donkey’s load. The king and his sons stopped in their tracks and there was a deafening silence. At the end of it, the king started laughing again, this time at himself and his sons.

In a while the three of them were out of the water and set foot towards the palace. 

Akbar turned towards Birbal in an apologetic manner. Birbal smiled at the King and said, “Jahanpannah, good humour thrives when both sides can take it evenly. I am happy to be in the company of a jovial person.”

The true lies – Part 3

The hunter empathised with the saint. He sat in front of the saint, humility personified.

The saint looked at the hunter and understood the greatness of the man in front of him, though, perhaps he himself did not realise it.

"Maybe", thought the saint, "greatness reaches you unawares and remains within you only as long as you do not realise it.”

The hunter earnestly continued narrating the story of the holy sage who had lived in the forest a few decades ago.  “His ashram was right over there” pointed the hunter towards a hut,,which now bore a deserted look. “I wish I had taken better care of his abode” rued the hunter.

“He used to teach the little children who lived nearby.” Though the children he taught were from very modest upbringing, the sage took pride in sharing his knowledge with them. After the elders returned home from their day’s work, they too sat around the sage, and listened intently to the sage’s words. To them every word from his mouth was holy.

“The light that enters every body leaves with a different hue, each hue being as beautiful as the other”, he would often say. "Similarly knowledge enters every soul and exhibits itself in different forms, each form being as pure as the other."

The hunter had not understood those words then. In spite of it, he would listen. “But today, every word makes a lot of meaning and sense to me.”The hunter took a pause and asked the holy man who was intently listening to him, “Do you know how I met this sage, who became my Guru, my philosopher and today my guiding angel?” The saint told him he was curious to know more about this man whose words seem to have inspired many.

“I was a robber and stole things from people for a livelihood. One day I was caught and people came chasing me. I ran into this forest and looked around for a place to hide. I could find none. It was then that my desperate gaze fell on the hut. I ran to the ashram, saw the sage and briefly told him to save me from my pursuers. I told him that I had stolen things from them and was willing to return everything to them.”

The sage had asked him to hand over his loot to him and then hide in the ashram. When the gang reached the ashram they asked the saint if he had seen a man running with stolen things. The sage simply gestured that he was on ‘Maunvrath’ or an oath of silence for a day. He handed over the bundle of loot and pointed straight ahead.

The chasers assumed that the thief had thrown the loot and ran away in the direction pointed at by the sage. To confirm their assumption they asked the saint if the robber was still around. The sage wrote ‘Nowhere’ and the people who were hitherto angry, left with the satisfaction of having got back what they lost.

“After the people who were chasing me left, I fell at the feet of the sage and asked him to pardon me." To save me he had to tell a lie.The sage smiled benevolently, and told me that he had not uttered a word of lie and that he had written ‘Now here’ which was still the truth.

He then told me that in the instant that I handed over my loot to him he saw a transformation in my eyes and sensed that I was destined to do greater things in life. He then told me to hunt only for my needs and never to loot the hard work of someone else. To save a robber like me the saint used tact and took over the responsibility of turning me over into a new leaf. 

Later the sage explained the difference between truth and lies to me."Truth is what we perceive things as, within the limited knowledge that we possess. Truth or lies, good or evil, therefore are all reflections of our mind and do not have any fixed form. When we seek knowledge our perception about happenings change and therefore truth also changes.”

"Knowledge leaves every soul purifying the heart. Whatever you do, do it with pure heart and then that becomes the truth."

The saint stood up and with a pure heart prostrated before the hunter!

The true lies – Part 2

The hunter was overwhelmed after hearing the story of the saint who was passing by. The saint had narrated his tale to the hunter after patiently listening to the hunter’s account of his life. 

The saint had taken an oath in the presence of the Almighty that he would never tell a lie in his life. True to his words he had lived an honest life and kept up the promise that he had made. 

One day as he was sitting in his ashram an innocent man was chased by a gang of robbers. The robbers looked very fierce and were heavily armed. The man who was running away from them did not seem the sort who would get into troubles.The saint was quite astonished. He asked the man what the matter was. The man was gasping for breath and just managed to tell the saint that he was an accidental witness to a murder that the group of robbers had done and they want to kill him too. So saying the man told the saint that he wanted to hide somewhere and the ashram was the safest place that he could think of. He dashed into the ashram and climbed on to the attic. 

Meanwhile, the gang that was chasing him reached the ashram. They looked everywhere around the ashram, but could not find the man. They went to the saint and asked him if he had seen a man trying to escape from them. The saint was in a dilemma. Since he had seen the man he could not say otherwise. If he told the truth, an innocent man would be killed.

The saint told the robbers that he had seen the man. The robbers then asked him in which direction he ran. The saint pointed towards the ashram.The next minute God appeared in front of the saint and told him, that his truth had done more harm than good and hence he is destined to spend his time in hell after his death. 

All the hard work and penance done by the saint went in vain. He was sad and started wandering in the forest from then on.

The hunter told the saint that there is a thin line between truth and lies. He then humbly bowed in front of the saint and told him that there was a similar story of a saint that he had heard when he was a little boy. 

The hunter began narrating the second story.

-         To be continued…