Near a city was a temple dedicated to Shiva. A sage used to live there. He would eat by begging for food. Every day, after finishing his meal, he would leave the leftovers aside, and the next day he would distribute that to the temple workers.
The mouse (who is telling the story) was told about this. He knew that the sage would hang the leftovers from a peg to ensure no one was able to get to it. The mouse decided to try his luck.
The mouse went, got the food, and threw it down for the other mice to share it. Night after night, this continued.
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When the sage realized that the food was being stolen, he raised the peg higher, but that did not deter the mouse. He would find a way to get the food.
The sage tried a tactic. He began beating the bowl with a stick to frighten the mouse. The moment the sage drifted off to sleep, the mouse would come. The noise that the mouse would make would wake the sage, and he would hit the bowl again. This continued, and neither did the mouse get any food, nor did the sage get any sleep.
A wandering sage one day arrived there to meet the sage who lived in the temple. The two began talking, and the temple sage only gave half-hearted replies. He was more bothered about the mouse and how to save his food. The wandering sage got upset, thinking he was being ignored.
The temple sage then told him the reason for all this.
The wandering sage asked where the mouse lived, to which the temple sage said he had no idea. The other sage said the mouse must be having a lot of food, which is why it was energetic and could jump up to any height. For any action, there is an explanation, like the lady who tried to exchange husked sesame seeds with unhusked ones. “What was that?” asked the temple sage.
The Sesame Seed Story
On the eve of a Sankranti festival, a Brahmin told his wife that the next day he would go begging for food. If someone came to their house, they should also be fed. The wife asked how they could feed others when they were poor themselves. Her husband asked her to share whatever little she had. The wife said she had some sesame seeds. She would unhusk them and cook them them. (Sentence ending error: remove second ‘them’)
The next day, the lady soaked the seeds, removed the husks, and put them in the sun to dry. She had laid it outside when a dog came and urinated over the seeds. The lady could not use them. She thought she would exchange the husked seeds with unhusked ones.
She went to a house and asked for the exchange. The lady of the house agreed, but her son stopped her and asked her to find out the reason for the exchange. Knowing she would be exposed, the Brahmin’s wife returned home without the exchange.
Ending the story, the wandering sage said, “This is why I said, every action has an explanation.” He asked the temple sage if there was a pickaxe in his possession.
The temple sage said he had an iron pickaxe.
The wandering sage said to follow the mouse’s tracks the next day, and dig up the hole and find out the stash of food that it had hidden.
The mouse was not sure what to do next. They could find out his house. So, instead of going home straight, the mouse took a detour to go home. On the way, he came across a tomcat. Some of the mice, along with this mouse, got killed by the cat, and many got injured. The mouse, seeing this, went to his hole.
The tracks were followed by the sages who followed the tracks and found the hole. Using the pickaxe, they destroyed the hole and stole the mouse’s food and left. When the sun set, the mouse went back to the temple with some other mice. Seeing the mouse, the temple sage began beating the bowl with his stick. The wandering sage asked him to stop. Seeing that the food was gone, the mouse would also have lost his energy. He would not be able to jump. The sage stopped.
In the night, when the mouse tried to reach the bowl, it missed and fell down. Dejected, the mouse left. The other mice who were following the mouse saw the failure. They left him and moved to another group. The mouse went back to the temple and tried to steal the food, but it failed again. The mouse said, “It was impossible to escape destiny.”
When the mouse said this, the crow and the turtle asked the reason for this.
Key takeaways
The mouse showed persistence because he had the food. When he lost it, he became weak, dejected, and meek.
The other mice immediately abandoned their leader, the mouse, after his failure and loss of wealth/power, highlighting the nature of loyalty derived from resources.
The son in the sesame seed story displayed wisdom by questioning the reason for the exchange, preventing his mother from accepting the contaminated goods.
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