Of Akbar, Birbal and shopping for vegetables .....


Akbar and Birbal stories are evergreen – on reading them again with my 8-year old daughter, I am enthralled all over again. Maybe part of the reason why these stories are popular across generations is that human behaviour is not all that different across centuries .....

Here I want to remind you of Birbal’s quest for the ten most prized fools in Akbar’s kingdom. One of the fools that Birbal thought was noteworthy was one who had lost his ring somewhere but was searching for it elsewhere since it was brighter there and therefore easier to search !! When I read this story I was not too sure whether such fools could possibly exist.

Recently a friend of mine asked her husband if he could go and get some vegetables that they needed – (she should have remembered that the male species thinks differently and hates to shop). Sure enough, he came back after half an hour with vegetables that could not have made it to any woman’s shopping bag. The ladies fingers were the anti-thesis of tender and almost broke her favourite knife. She had to throw half of the brinjals since they were infested with worms and the tired-looking coriander leaves were obviously not kitchen-worthy. She asked him if he bought this from where she usually shopped for vegetables. His answer: “No, I bought it at another vegetable shop since it was easier to park my car there.” When I heard about this, the Birbal story about the man who searched under the streetlight did not seem so incredible anymore...