My favorite Story

Storybook

The goal of this page is to showcase my favorite story/book. My reading time these days are filled with jargons from Java and Javascript. Stories?! Hmmm. I decided to Google and found a nice website. I like many books and stories, but this one stood out, as the narrator says it's apt for the lockdown time. So, I chose this.

Let me first tell you the story as I recollect it. After that, I will share the narration on the above mentioned site

Once Akbar1, moghul emperor of India, wanted to go out to hunt with his court jester/advisor/friend Birbal. They get on their horses and went into the forest to find animals to hunt2. Couple of times, Akbar saw some animals and tried to shoot and missed. Birbal kept saying, "it's all for good. It's all happening for a reason". Akbar was annoyed, but still put up with it.

When it happened too many times, Akbar got annoyed and sent an arrow towards Birbal to caution him. But he accidentally chopped off the tip of his thumb. He lost the tip of a thumb. Birbal again murmurs his old adage, "Everything happens for a reason". This really annoyed the king to no end, that he orders his guards to take Birbal away to be hanged at dawn. The guards did.

Now the king is on his own. The forest they were hunting in, had tribals that didn't like outsiders. If they caught them, they would sacrifice the outsiders to their Gods. Not knowing any of these, Akbar wanders around and then right into their hands. There was a huge commotion. He was brought before the head shaman who inspected the king thoroughly. Suddenly, they were untying him. Then they were yelling at him to go away. Not understanding a word of it, he ran back as fast as he could to his palace.

He went to the jail to see Birbal. He was about to be taken out for execution. King orders them to stop. He tells Birbal what happened and that he was sorry. As he found out, when he lost a thumb he was blemished and the tribesmen rejected him to be the sacrifical body as he was blemished! Birbal said, see "Everything happens for a reason" to which Akbar gladly agreed.

The king then asks Birbal how come it didn't apply to Birbal that he was about to lose his life in vain? Birbal calmly said, "Oh king! It did for me as well. Imagine you didn't kick me out and we both got caught! I would have been the unblemished one and I cannot imagine my fate then!". Akbar realized the truth in it and hugged his friend and apologized again.

Notes:

1 - See Glossary below for more details on names and Indian terms


Video narration of the story - Birbal and Akbar

Now let's watch a video from the above mentioned site, that narrates this story in an old fashioned storytelling way.

Birbal and Akbar's Missing Thumb from Richard Martin on Vimeo

Story teller on that site, Richard Martin, the story teller has several stories and promotes a good storytelling as an art.

Hope you liked the story. We welcome your feedback below

**Where Rating is,

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Glossary:

Jester
A joker or clown in medieval courts. Though they were all over the world, in Indian context, they were usual wisemen with a sense of humor
Akbar
Third Moghul emperror of India
Moghul
A dynasty established in India when the first Moghul, Babur, an Uzbek prince wandered into India with an army and defeated the weak local king in India in A.D 1526
Birbal
A court Jester in Akbar's court. He was not just a joker, but an advisor to the king as well
Thenali Raman
Court Jester in Krishna Deva Raya's court
Krishna Deva Raya
Great Hindu king of VijayaNagara Empire
Aesop's tales
From Greece. Here is a quote from the site:
“Aesop's Fables”—also called “the Aesopica”—are a collection of stories designed to teach moral lessons credited to Aesop, a Greek slave and story-teller thought to have lived between 620 and 560 BCE.
Pancha Tantra
From the site: Panchatantra stories are the oldest surviving fables from Ancient India. See above link for more details.