CHANGE OF STRATEGY
Shamsheer – Kollam
A young lion once found a bracelet in the jungle, at the outskirts of the village. The next day, the lion saw a man near the village and showed him the bracelet. The lion asked him if the bracelet would be of any use to him.
The man immediately said that he wanted it. In return, he said he would offer a sheep each day for a week.
The young lion was happy. It walked to his den and told everything to his mother. ‘We don’t have to hunt for a week. We’ll have food delivered to us’, he told his mother.
For a week, the lion did not go hunting. It only ate and slept.
After a week, his mother reminded him that he had to get back to hunting.
On the eighth day, the young lion went early and came back late at night, empty handed.
The mother lion was surprised for it had never happened like this to her son before. ‘What happened, you couldn’t hunt down any animal in the entire day?’.
‘Didn’t try hunting mom’, the young one told his mother, ‘Only looked for bracelets; didn’t find any’
WISDOM PREVAILS
Kavitha – Calicut
A priest and his assistant once went for a dip in the sea. However a strong current pulled them deep into the sea bed and a mermaid soon appeared before them.
‘Welcome to the water world’ the mermaid told them, ‘Be my guests and before you go, I would like to present you with gold’.
The mermaid swung her wand and gold jewels appeared, which she gave to the assistant. The priest however refused to accept anything.
The next day they were back on the shores and the entire village gathered to hear their adventure. The priest however expressed his unhappiness, ‘You see gold would soon be exhausted some day, it wouldn’t last forever. Now what would you do after that?’
The people were moved by the wisdom of the priest, when he put his hand inside his shirt and said ‘That’s why I stole her wand’
GOLDEN CURSE
Freddy Almeida – Goa
A young man was walking through a forest all alone, when a bunch of goats reached over and surprisingly spoke to him, ‘There is a sack of gold coins behind that rock over there, from which you may take two and save our lives. Please don’t take more than two’.
Bewildered at the strange happenings, he reached out, opened the sack, and took a handful of coins and going back to the goats said, ‘I’ve taken two gold coins’.
No sooner had he said this, he too turned into a goat.
Now all the goats rushed to him, ‘Cheat why did you lie. If you had only taken two, you could have saved us all, and the sack too would have been yours. Now even you have become cursed like us’.
When the goats had finished, two asses charged at him menacingly, shouting ‘Baah, baah, baah…’.
He asked the goats, ‘Who are these asses and what are they trying to tell?’
‘Well, they too are terribly disappointed over what you did’, one of the goats said, ‘Anyway they are the Rodger brothers from the south who had been changed to dumb asses for trying to run off with the sack’.
ROYAL DOUBT
Kavitha Kumari – Cochin
Two ants wandering in the forest stumbled upon a gold ring. They informed their king ant and the king ant sent an army to retrieve it. Having brought the ring to his courtroom, the king ant climbed up the ring, walked along the inner and outer sides and quietly sat back on his throne.
The wise veteran minister ant showed up, ‘Your majesty, you have brought this ring here with much difficulty and effort and now you seem to wonder what to do with it? Am I right your majesty?’
‘No way’, the ant king replied, ‘I am just worried if it is an original or a gild’.
