To his astonishment, a group of beautiful women appeared. They wore the most gorgeous silk saris. Gem-studded necklaces and earrings of gold adorned their necks and gleamed in their ears. Garlands of sweet-scented flowers decorated their lovely long hair. Best of all, they were holding dishes full of food in their hands. Coconut rice, lemon rice, curd rice, steaming hot sambhar, a variety of spicy vegetables, puris and payasam (milk pudding) fragrant with cardamom.
At first, Krishnan was so stunned that he could only gape in wonder. Then, when they set a silver plate before him and began to serve him, he came out of his trance and gobbled down the best meal he had had in a long, long time. Best of all, they attended to him with so much consideration and courtesy that he felt like a lord, not a poor hard-up labourer. They seemed to guess what he needed before he could even ask.
Krishnan ate till his belly could hold no more. He burped loudly and made a sign to show that he’d finished. The spirits hurried and brought a betel leaf for him to chew, then offered him scented water to wash his hands. Then, even before Krishnan could say, ‘Thank you!’ they vanished as mysteriously as they’d arrived.
The empty pots still lay before him.
Krishnan bowed his head and prayed to the gods, thanking them for his good fortune. Then he hurried home as fast as he could.
‘Why are you so late?’ Lalitha yelled, opening the door. ‘What have you brought?’
When he told her about the magic pots, she frowned, ‘You’re making all this up.’
‘Do you think I’d dare to make up such a tale?’ Krishnan cried. ‘Here, smell my mouth, smell my hands!’
‘Ayyayo! You’ve been chewing betel! It’s been years since I tasted a single leaf of it. And your hands smell of roses! O blessed Lord Shiva! Have our fortunes really changed?’ She flung herself on the ground, folded her hands and thanked the gods for changing their fortunes.
The two decided that they would only use the vessels after offering prayers and sharing their blessings with the whole village. They placed the pots before their household gods and spent a restless night waiting for morning to come.
The sun had barely come up when Krishnan finished bathing and hurried to the house of his nearest neighbour.
‘What is it?’ the man frowned. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come to borrow a handful of rice? We don’t have any to spare, sorry!’
‘No, no, Rajan,’ Krishnan beamed. ‘I’ve come to invite you for a feast.’
‘Ayyayo, a feast? You can barely manage two mouthfuls a day to keep yourself alive and you’re talking of a feast,’ Rajan laughed. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘No, no, I mean it. And please bring your whole family. All your children, your old parents, everyone.’ Saying this, Krishnan rushed off to the next house in the village, and the next and the next.
But everywhere, he got the same response. People joked, mocked him or thought he’d gone mad. Some even repeated the proverb, ‘The guests of the poor come back home early.’
All the same, by noon, almost the whole village had gathered before Krishnan and Lalitha’s little hut. Many of them had been wise enough to eat before coming and only came there to watch the fun.
Lalitha had done her best to make the place look festive. She had swept her courtyard carefully and drawn lovely patterns of kolam with coloured powder on the ground.
‘Welcome, dear friends,’ she said bowing low and asked them to take their seats on the tattered straw mats they had set out. Then she and Krishnan produced the strange-looking pots.
The guests burst out laughing. ‘Are we going to feast on air?’ one said.
‘There seems to be nothing else in these pots,’ another smirked.
‘I invited you for a feast,’ Krishnan said, ‘and you will get it. Blessed vessels,’ he said, folding his hands, ‘please bestow your goodness on our dear neighbours.’
The moment he spoke, a throng of charming women came out of the pots, decked as before in the richest of silks and the finest of jewellery. An appetising aroma arose from the dishes they carried. Silver plates and bowls laid themselves out in front of the guests, and the women began to serve them.
‘Is this real or am I dreaming?’ Rajan cried.
‘The food seems real enough,’ said Sankaran, who sat next to him, shoving a huge morsel into his mouth. ‘I have never tasted anything so delicious.’
And as they ate, the delicacies kept coming. The guests stuffed themselves so much that they had a hard time rising from their seats.
After this, people couldn’t stop talking about Krishnan’s wonderful feast. Overnight, his position changed. From being the most scorned, he became the most respected person in the village.
It so happened that a rich man named Swamy also lived in the same village. Krishnan himself had often laboured in his fields. He hadn’t dared to invite Swamy for the feast because he thought he might feel insulted. Now Swamy noticed that everyone was talking about Krishnan and the miraculous pots. He could not bear the fact that a poor labourer had become so prosperous that he was being considered his equal in the village.
Swamy decided to visit Krishnan and discover the secret of his sudden wealth. When they saw the great man approaching, swishing his gold-bordered dhoti, with one of his servants holding an umbrella over his head, Krishnan and Lalitha were overawed.
They ran to greet him. ‘O, how did your eminence think of visiting our wretched abode,’ Krishnan cried, bowing low. ‘What can we offer you?’ He was so flustered that he almost forgot about the magic pots till Lalitha nudged him. ‘O please, taste some of our humble fare!’
Lalitha quickly brought out the magic pots. The beautiful women appeared, served them the usual fabulous fare and vanished again.
‘Ah,’ Swamy said, patting his belly. ‘I have never eaten such scrumptious food in my life. Krishnan, my dear, dear friend, I am so happy for you. No one deserves this good fortune more than you.’
‘It is all God’s kindness and your good wishes, sir,’ Krishnan said humbly.
‘No, it is your own merit,’ said the rich man. ‘Please accept these small gifts as a token of my esteem.’ He produced an expensive sari for Lalitha and a gold-bordered dhoti for Krishnan.
The two simple people felt highly obliged at this favour from the great Swamy. So, when he asked, ‘But tell me, friend, from where did you get these magic pots?’ Krishnan told him the whole story.
Swamy left with a satisfied smirk on his face. ‘Is that all?’ he said to himself. ‘I’ll soon put this stupid fellow in his proper place.’
He hurried home and asked his cook to prepare the most delectable dishes. Then he arranged them in a basket and sent for his palanquin. He ordered the bearers to carry him to the place Krishnan had described. When he got to the point where three roads crossed and found the banyan tree, he told the servants to go away and return a few hours later. He set down the basket and lay down under the tree. He thought he would pretend to sleep because he wanted to see the mysterious people who performed this magic. But as it happened, he dozed off. When he awoke with a start, he was delighted to find the food all gone and four strange-looking pots lying there.
‘I knew I could do it!’ he gloated. ‘If the spirits could reward Krishnan so highly for those miserable scraps of stale rice, mine will be fabulous beyond all measure. I provided them with a feast fit for the gods.’
His palanquin arrived just then, and he urged the bearers to rush home. The moment he arrived, he ordered his servants to go around the village and invite everyone for a feast.
The next morning, his banquet hall was decorated with garlands of the rarest, sweetest smelling flowers and a group of musicians was invited to play while his guests feasted. The whole village turned up. They remembered Krishnan’s feast and were sure that Swamy’s would be far more magnificent. Some of them even starved themselves to be able to do justice to the food!
Swamy and his wife dressed in their best and welcomed their guests. Servants
brought the four pots and placed them on a special platform. Then Swamy held up a hand and said in a loud voice, ‘Pots, I command you to perform your magic!’
The guests smiled expectantly, waiting for the lovely ladies to appear and feed them. But instead, a bunch of tall, hefty men leapt out – brawny and muscular, like wrestlers. As the host and his guests watched, terrified, they produced shiny razors and caught hold of them one by one. Beginning with the rich man and his wife, they shaved all their heads, so perfectly that they gleamed like polished brass. Not a single person got away. And as the petrified guests tottered out, one of the barbers held up a huge mirror so they could get a good look at their faces!
This banquet, too, was much talked about in the village, but everyone cursed Swamy so much that he had to move out of the village.
Of course, he had not bothered to invite Krishnan and Lalitha, so they were lucky enough to keep their hair! Better still, the magic pots continued to provide for them, so they never wanted for anything again.
Acknowledgements
The following stories first appeared: “The Fruit of Hard Work”, “Night into Day” (under the title “The Shining Princess”), “The Music Loving Demon” and “Wisdom For Sale” in Folktales from India, Macmillan India, 1997; “The Palanquin of the Goddess” in Cricket magazine (USA), May 1994; “The Talking Parrot and the Flying Horse” in Cricket, July 2000; “How Prince Ranbir Found Knowledge” in Cricket, January 2010; “The Barber’s Secret” in Spider magazine (USA), 2001; “The Golden Rat” in Spider, 2007; and “The Pots of Plenty” in Fascinating Folktales, Radical Books, 2006.
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First published in India in 2017 by Harper Business
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Text © Deepa Agarwal
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P-ISBN: 978-93-5277-471-5
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