Punctuate, for comma's sake!

Once there lived a comma, a full stop, a question mark and an exclamatory mark. They were good friends and laughed and played together.

“Where are we going to play today?” asked the question mark.

“I am not sure. Let us ask comma” said full stop.

“I can suggest an idea, but I am not sure if it will be exciting,” said comma pausing for a second.

I can suggest an idea, but..paused the comma

“How marvellous would it be if we could create an imaginary world and reside there!” exclaimed the exclamatory mark.

Exclamatory mark’s idea appealed to the rest. They urged her to initiate the game and all of them would join in.

Exclamatory mark's idea appealed to the rest...

She began by traveling into an unknown kingdom, which was ruled by capital letters. They felt very important and listened to none. The subjects of the kingdom were in a deep predicament.

Their voices were falling on deaf ears as the capital letters stood tall and out of ear-shot of the smaller letters.

The smaller letters had to find someone as tall as them to talk to the capitals. But who wanted to speak to the arrogant rulers and earn their wrath?

“Though I am tall, I do not have a strong foundation. If the rulers blow at me, I will fly away,” said the double quotes.

“If such is the case of the ‘double’, imagine what will happen to me,” said the single quote.

The discussion continued for many days and these days rolled into months. No solution seemed to emerge and the capitals were enjoying their rule, though the same could not be said of the subjects.

Distraught, they decided to get together and march in protest against their erring leaders.

On seeing so many punctuation marks marching in unison, a pair of parentheses that was new to the area, wanted to know the reason for the protest. In turn the others briefed him about the on-going situation.

After patiently listening to their situation, the parentheses offered to mediate. “I am tall and I can reach them. Well, I can even enclose them within me. But assure me that once they become reasonable you will be willing to live with them happily,” counseled the wise ‘parent’heses.

The rest of them happily agreed.

The parentheses then asked the other punctuation marks to march in unison and attract the attention of the capital letters.

The group made loud noise and raised slogans as they marched ahead.

“Capitals, down, down!” they all shouted together.

On hearing unusual sounds, the capital letters came out of their palace rooms and gathered together. asking each other what the matter was.

When they saw their subjects marching together and heard their slogans, they were enraged.

“Who gave them the audacity to talk against us?” screamed capital A.

“How dare they?” capital D almost lost his head.

“Let us show them who we are!” roared capital S.

But before the power-drunk capital letters could do anything the parentheses enclosed them.

(ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ)

The parentheses pushed them closer together...

They tried moving but ended up hitting against each other. Soon they were hurting each other as the parentheses pushed them closer together.

“Don’t push me,” said capital P to capital O.

“Oh, and look at what you are doing to me,” said capital O.

“You are choking me,” cried capital C to capital B.

“But I did nothing,” said capital B, rather helplessly.

As the chaos between the parentheses increased, the marchers stopped and watched what unfolded before them with amusement.

Suddenly and in a coordinated move the parentheses moved away. All the capital letters fell to the ground, moaning and groaning.

The parentheses asked the on-lookers to go forward and help the fallen letters.

As they had promised, the rest of them went in between the fallen letters, and helped them to their feet.

With the smaller letters pooling together to pick each of the capital letters up, a beautiful pattern emerged.

The world of imagination turned into reality and comma, full stop, question mark and exclamatory mark joined the party.

Parentheses clicked the picture of the happy family that came to be known as language.

“Isn’t it wonderful to see the capital letters in between their smaller relatives, protecting them and taking care of them?” asked the right parentheses to the left one. 

The tall capitals shouldered their responsibilities well. They allowed the smaller letters to laugh and play, while they called out to their mates across the words to discuss matters of governance of the language kingdom. The comma and full stop brought in the much needed pause and break in relationships at the right time.

In the end they all realised, how important it was to give space to each other in every relationship!

Tenali Raman's reward

Tenali Raman had a unique way of warning King Krishnadevaraya. Raman was uncomfortable, as the guards in the King’s palace were becoming corrupt. The king was unaware of what was happening behind his back. Raman knew that it was up to him to expose them to the King.

But he also knew that they had earned a good name and it would be difficult to convince the King.

Raman decided to wait for the right opportunity and luckily for him the opportunity presented itself very soon.

One day the King and the Queen were watching a dance drama by a special troupe and the King did not want to be disturbed. He told his guards not to let anyone inside.

Raman arrived at the court late and did not know what was going on. He decided to meet the king and approached the first guard. He told the guard that the King had promised him a reward. If the guard allowed him entry, Raman promised to share 50% of what he got.

When greed enters you, it turns your world upside down. Tenali seemed to be standing upside down to the guard as he let Tenali in.

Near the entrance of the hall, there was a second guard, who, very soon saw Tenali standing upside down! Another 50% from Raman’s rewards was allocated to guard number 2, towards gaining entry into the hall.

Raman walked into the hall and before anybody realised what was happening, Raman took a stick and hit the dancers.

Krishnadevaraya was furious. He ordered 100 whip lashes as punishment, since Raman refused to explain why he hit the dancers.

Just as the attendant was about to hand out the punishment to Raman, Raman whispered something in his ears and he stopped.  Tenali Raman turned towards the King and explained that he had two friends waiting for him outside. They would most willingly share the whip lashes that Tenali was about to receive.

The King was surprised. He ordered the attendant to bring the two fools.

Without realising what gift Tenali was about to receive, they told the King that they were ready to accept 50% of whatever Tenali was offered.

For a long time thereafter their world remained upright! King Krishnadevaraya thanked Tenali for exposing the corrupt guards.

Guilty conscience breaks the stick

 

One fine sunny morning, when the Emperor Akbar and his trusted minister Birbal were enjoying a stroll outside the palace, a rich merchant requested a meeting with the wise minister Birbal. 

Emperor Akbar was curious to know who it was and asked the merchant to be ushered in. When the merchant arrived at the garden, the King asked him what the matter was. 

The merchant seemed quite upset and told the King and Birbal that there were frequent episodes of theft in his house and he suspected that one of his servants was involved in it. Nevertheless, he did not wish to conduct any check on the servants as most of them were loyal and honest. Therefore, he did not wish to insult them in any manner.

Birbal told the merchant that he would visit his house the following day and help him find the thief.

The merchant thanked the minister and left. After the merchant left, the Emperor was curious to know how Birbal proposed to solve the case. Birbal was not ready to let the cat out the bag. But he could not tell that to his King. Instead he asked the King if he was willing to help him. The King agreed and Birbal left abruptly.

The following day, Birbal requested Akbar to dress up as a holy man and come to the merchant’s house with a bundle of sticks. For once, the King obeyed his subject’s orders. 

Curiosity does strange things to people, we understand!

On reaching the merchant’s house, Birbal called all the servants employed by the merchant. He then told them that, to find out how things went missing from the house, he had met a holy man. The holy man promised Birbal that he had some magical sticks that would reveal the identity of the thief.

Just then Akbar entered the house. Birbal bowed in front of the ‘Swamiji’ and asked him to hand over the sticks to the servants one by one, after sprinkling the holy water on each of the stick. 

Birbal asked the Swamiji to hand over the sticks to the servants...

 

Well, Akbar proved to be a living example of the well-known fact, ‘he who knows how to obey knows how to command’!

The servants took the sticks one by one. Birbal then cleared his throat before he addressed the gathering. He told the servants that the sticks had the power to reveal the offender by increasing its height. 

“Generally the stick is known to grow by about two inches overnight. Only the stick in the hands of the wrong doer grows, while the rest will remain unchanged” said Birbal, studying the faces of the servants.

He then asked the merchant to keep watch over his servants till he returned the next morning.

On the way back, Akbar, who by now had realised Birbal’s strategy asked Birbal how he expected the offender to react. Birbal told Akbar that, the merchant watching over them will ensure that the thief did not have the opportunity to measure the stick any time soon. It will take a while before the merchant felt tired and dosed off, providing the first break for the thief to be able to do something. 

The next morning, Birbal arrived at the merchant’s house. Things had not changed much and the merchant admitted to having dozed off for a couple of hours. Birbal went around collecting the stick. Soon it was the turn of the thief to hand over his stick. The hesitation in handing over the stick instantly made Birbal realise that the man was guilt ridden. He immediately measured the stick against the others’ sticks and sure enough, the stick was smaller in size.

Once all the sticks were collected, Birbal called the guilty man and told everyone, that the Swamiji’s magic had worked, but instead of making the stick grow, it has broken it and thereby shortened it.

Everyone had a hearty laugh and the merchant got the answer he wanted without offending the honourable servants.

 

The Swamiji's magic had worked!