Reading Notes: Twenty Jataka Tales Reading part B

Image: Deer, Quotesgram

I loved the first story from Reading B of Twenty Jataka Tales. It was about this woman who found two baby pigs on the side of the road and picked them up to bring home with her. She took care of them like they were her own children. Several years later, there came a time when the village needed more meat and asked the woman for her pigs. The lady called the two pigs in the opposite order she usually did when it was feeding time to try and warn them of the danger. One of the pigs came when they were called, and the other said this poem that magically made the men from the village happy. In the poem, it talked about the perfume that never fades away, which is love. The pigs ended up being taken in by the King and lived there until he died. Why did they have to leave the woman though? Wouldn't their happy ending include her?

Another good story was about a beautiful deer that was silent and lived deep in the forest. One day the King was riding in the forest and spotted the deer and tried to get his horse to catch up to it. However, the deer (named Sarabha) could leap over a chasm that the king's horse couldn't. Sarabha, however, saw that he had caused the King to be trapped in the chasm, so he went down into the rocks and pulled the King out. As a favor, the King offered the palace to Sarabha, but the only thing Sarabha wanted was for hunting to not be allowed in the forest he called home.

The last story I'm thinking about making a story about was the one where some travelers shipwreck on an island. They try and find someone to help them, but they only find beautiful women. They become entranced by these women and live with them for a while. One night, one of the men realized that the women were goblins in disguise and that they needed to get off the island. Luckily, a magical unicorn came and brought them home.

Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales by Noor Inayat. Link to Reading Guide

Story: Antonio and the Three Grandmas

Morningside Park, NYC: Biking in Manhattan

The first week of November in New York City had brought the beginnings of a harsh winter. Whereas the week before, natives wore light sweaters, now the strong wind demanded heavy coats to walk a couple of blocks. Antonio was making his daily rounds on the subway. He would get a free swipe and ride the train all day, collect some cash from a few people, and go back to the Morningside Park where he would distribute his earnings among his family. His family happened to be three old ladies he called "grandma", an old man who didn't like to admit that they were friends, and a teenager who was relatively new to the homeless world after realizing the cruel world didn't care about her dreams to be a musician. Every day, Antonio woke up, bought coffees for the old ladies so they could stay inside for a couple of hours, and then him and the teen would go to the subway station together. While the teen sat in the subway station playing violin, he would do his daily rounds on the train. They happened to be saving up for coats, since the supply at the local shelter had run out weeks ago.

On this day, it was particularly cold. Even the train was cold, so he couldn't imagine how cold his grandmas would be right now, outside in that park. At the end of the day, he met the teen at their stop and walked back to the ladies. From a distance, he saw one extra figure among his family. Who was this strange dark figure?

As he got closer, Antonio realized it was the cops. He began to run. The cops had noticed.

"Sir, please calm down." They didn't seem comfortable with anyone running towards them.

"They have done nothing wrong." he tried to explain to the cops.

"I'm sorry, but a new city ordinance requires that all transients be required to leave after 5 PM. It is currently 8 PM, and these women are here illegally now."

"Please, it won't happen again. Please let them go." The cops looked at each other and nodded.

"Just this once." They left and Antonio helped the ladies up so that they could all find a place to stay that night. He walked them twenty blocks to the nearest homeless shelter where he put their names on the list for a bed. After three hours waiting, they were given some soup and a place to stay. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow all six of them to stay, so Antonio agreed to sleep outside.

It grew colder and colder until he was unable to stop shivering. The shelter owners recognized him as the caretaker to the old ladies and remembered how kind he was to them. They couldn't bear to see such a kind person die from cold outside, so they carried him into the shelter. It seemed that he had been saved just in time. After that day, his grandmas and teenager always had a place on the list because the shelter directors were so moved by his generosity.

A/N

This story was based on one from the book "Twenty Jataka Tales." In the story, a king called Brahmadatta ruled over a land that had an adjoining forest. A troupe of monkeys lived in some trees in that forest, and were always careful to keep their presence secret. One day, fruit made its way over to the town and the monkeys were discovered. The king came with his subjects to get the fruit and kill the monkeys by trapping them on a tree. To save his troupe, the chief of monkeys made a bridge with a branch, but it was too short to reach, so he had to make his back part of the bridge. His back was broken by saving the monkeys, but the king felt so bad for the chief of monkeys that he gave him a nice last day of his life.

I tried to create a similar troupe of people living in the streets of New York trying to lay low in the park. The police finding the homeless family is supposed to parallel the king's subjects finding the monkeys. The chief of monkeys died helping his family, so I wanted to have Antonio sacrifice himself to keep his family safe too. The only difference is that I didn't have the nerve to allow Antonio to die, so instead, he just suffers one bad night in the cold until the shelter workers find him.


Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales by Noor Inayat. Link to reading guide.

Reading Notes: Twenty Jataka Tales Reading A

In the first story, a king called Brahmadatta ruled over a land that had an adjoining forest. A troupe of monkeys lived in some trees in that forest, and were always careful to keep their presence secret. There were fresh mangoes on the trees and the chief always told them that if the stream carried fruit to the land where people lived, the people would come and take all their food. One day, fruit made its way over to the town. The king came with his subjects to get the fruit and kill the monkeys by trapping them on a tree. To save his troupe, the chief of monkeys made a bridge with a branch, but it was too short to reach, so he had to make his back part of the bridge. His back was broken by saving the monkeys, but the king felt so bad for the chief of monkeys that he gave him a nice last day of his life.

The other stories seemed very similar to this one. They're all about animals being killed or about to be killed until they are spared. For example, there was one involving two clans of deer that were not being hunted by a king because they were golden, and the king wanted to spare the golden deer. Instead, he hunted all the normal deer. The golden deer tried to save the normal deer by taking turns going where they might be hunted. One day, the leader of one clan, Banyan, took his turn, but the king would not hunt him. The king vowed to spare not only the golden deer, but all the other deer and animals in the forest.

My favorite story was about a man who wanted to make his family rich so that his daughters and wife would be spoiled. Unfortunately, a fairy turned him into a golden goose. He visited his family so that they could sell his golden feathers. His wife thought maybe the goose would stop coming, so they plucked out all of his feathers and always had money. However, his wife kept the poor goose (her husband) in a barrel with no food. Soon, white feathers grew on the goose and it flew away "far away to a forest where every bird was happy."

Image: Webshots

I tried to read the story about the swans, but I kept imagining different colored swans living in a pretty lake and the story seemed lame in comparison to the picture I was constructing in my mind.



Bibliograpy: Twenty Jataka Tales by Noor Inayat. Link to Reading Guide.

Reading Notes: Sacred Tales of India Part D

The first story was called "The Fatal Oath" and to be honest I did not completely understand it. Up until the part where Bijaya comes home and cries upon hearing the death of her mother, everything makes sense. However, after that, Bijaya swears by something (perhaps the goddess?) and therefore her family dies. She searches out to find the goddess Sashthi, whom her mother worshiped on a regular basis. It was now her turn to continue worshiping Sashthi, and so she found the goddess and performed a sacred ritual to bring her family back from the dead.

The next story was very strange. It was about a grandfather who wanted to have a pond, but no matter how far deep he dug, there was none. He had a dream in which the only way to get water was to cut up his infant grandson into pieces and bury them where he wanted the pond. He told his son about the dream, and so his son sacrificed the grandson without telling the mother of the child. The next day, plenty of water came to the plot and so the mother of the child cooked for a feast celebrating the water. She didn't think anything about her child being missing, as he probably was with his grandma or aunt. After doing her daily worship of Sashthi, the goddess appeared holding her son, who had been sacrificed the night before.

Another one of the stories was about a grandmother who was looking for her grandson, who was stolen by a cat after being born. So she went to find goddess Sashthi, in case she would help find her grandson. Along the way to Sashthi's house, she found a cow, a carpenter, tree, and stream that were wondering why nobody milked them, picked their fruit, and drank their water. They asked if the grandmother could ask Sashthi when she found her. It turns out that they all had refused service to a Brahman when they needed it.

The last two story, "The Banished Girls," an evil stepmom send her step-daughters away after convincing her husband that the two girls would bring about trouble. So after they are banished, the goddess Lakshmi took pity on them and sent them husbands.

                                                                 Lakshmi, Wikipedia


Bibliography: D.N. Neogi. Sacred Tales of India. Link to reading guide.

Extra Reading: Sacred Tales of India part C

Sacred Tales of India Notes (Reading Part C)

In the first story of the reading, a king had no children and, as a result, everyone (including his court) believed him to be evil. Apparently, childlessness was considered a bad omen. One day he heard the sweeper talk about how he eats early because if he sweeps and sees the king's face, he has a bad breakfast. The king went to his rooms and cried, until a holy ascetic came and predicted he would have many children if the king promised to give him one of them. Unfortunately, the son that was given to him was the one that the third wife gave birth to (Sankata-Narayan, which means he who was born in a conch shell). The ascetic took the son and told him to stay in the forest but not go South. The Prince decided to go south anyway and a beautiful woman he found there told him that the ascetic was going to use him as a sacrifice. So, he created a diversion and cut the ascetic's head off. He returned to his mother.

Vishnu and a Conch Shell: Pinterest

The other story that I liked was about Indra, the god of heaven. A Brahman was in the middle of blessing him, but Indra threw flowers at him, so the Brahman changed his mind and cursed Indra instead. Indra had been turned into a cat, and Sachi, his wife, was unaware of this. She tried to find the Brahman who had cursed Indra, but when she found him, he said that the curse could not be reversed. Thus, he would have to stay a cat in the house of a huntsman for 12 years. However Sachi started to worship the goddess Kalika and so the goddess felt bad for her and told Sachi that she could make the 12 years less terrible by letting Sachi and the cat sleep through the remaining years. They both woke up after the time was up and lived happily ever after.

In the last story, a Brahman is traveling. While he's hitchhiking through some land, a guy stops him and tell him that he wouldn't have to rely on charity if he started worshiping Satya Pir. The Brahman is used to worshiping Narayan. So the Brahman did the sacrifice as instructed and suddenly became rich.

Bibliography: D.N. Neogi. Sacred Tales of India. Link to Reading Guide.

Story Planning: "The Mouse and the Farmer"

I think I'd like to do a story based on "The Mouse and the Farmer" from my reading yesterday. Unfortunately, I'm not used to simple stories after reading the Ramayana and Mahabharata, so this week's readings have been a strange experience for me.

In "The Mouse and the Farmer," a mouse lives on a farm in a little hole. The farmer was always nice to the mouse (like sometimes he would throw Mousie a piece of cheese during dinner) Fortunately, the farm was built on land that had buried treasure, so one day the mouse gave the farmer a gold coin, and, in exchange, the farmer gave the mouse a good piece of meat to eat. This started happening on a daily basis for a couple of weeks. Soon, a cat named Grimalkin started to notice the mouse since he had gotten fatter. The cat threatened to eat the mouse unless the mouse gave the cat the nice meat. The farmer started noticing that the mouse kept getting skinnier (this was because Grimalkin was eating all of his food). Mousie told the farmer what was happening. The farmer gave him a clear inkwell or similar container, and when the cat came to eat the mouse, it saw the mouse through the inkwell and didn't realize there was a barrier between them. Grimalkin choked on the inkwell and the mouse crawled out of the dead cat's throat.

Brainstorming for plots:

Image: Public Domain Pictures

1. A girl is walking home and always passes by a group of cats and pets them every day when they're laying on the porch of a nearby house. One day, someone walks behind her and tries to attack her, but the cats have come to trust her, so they attack her attacker and nearly kill him/her. Every day after that, the girl keeps bringing the cats food and pets them. Obviously, I'm adding a bit of material as an epilogue but it might work! This version is switching the victim from an animal to a human and I love stories about how animals know more than their human counterparts sometimes.



2. A variation on the tale where Grimalkin sees that the farmer does not feed the Mouse, so instead of the farmer giving the Mouse food, Grimalkin (who is already on the farmer's good side) decides not to kill Mousie and instead gives him food.

I need to start changing up my writing style because I tend to stick with modern storytelling techniques. More ideas?

On a side note, Grimalkin is an old name for "grey cat" so I think I might use a name that translates to a characteristic of a character's personality or appearance.


Bibliography: W.D. Rouse. The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India. Link to reading.

Reading Notes: The Giant Crab

For this week, I branched out and read some short children's stories from "The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India." The first one was called "The Crab" and was about a crab (surprise) that lived in a lake and sat at the bottom waiting for animals to come to the lake so he could eat them. Soon, he becomes huge from all the food he's getting. Mr. and Mrs. Elephant soon become tired of the crab eating all of their animal friends, so they come up with a plan to kill him. They end up cracking his giant shell, and when they become Queen and King of the animal kingdom, they use the giant shells as drums in war.

The next one I liked was called "The Hypocritical Cat." A family of rats lived in a hole by the river that a cat liked to watch. The cat eventually tricks the rats into thinking he worshiped the sun and ate air, and that was why he always faced towards them. The cat made them think they were safe walking past him, since he didn't eat other animals, and so the cat kept eating rats that passed.

In "The Crocodile and the Monkey," a crocodile was persuaded by his wife to capture a monkey so that Mrs. Crocodile could eat its heart. Mr. Crocodile pretended that he wanted to help the monkey cross the wide river, but really he was going to drown him for his wife. However, the monkey convinced the crocodile that the figs hanging in the tree on the other side of the river were the hearts of monkeys. So the stupid crocodile believed him and helped the monkey across the river.

I have nothing to say about "The Wise Parrot and the Foolish Parrot" because it broke my heart to hear that a poor parrot was plucked by that horrible maid.

There was one story that I liked called "The Mouse and the Farmer." In this story, a mouse always gave the farmer a gold coin, and, in exchange, the farmer gave the mouse a good piece of meat to eat. Soon, a cat started to notice the mouse since he had gotten fatter. The cat threatened to eat the mouse unless the mouse gave the cat the nice meat. However, the farmer helped the poor mouse. He gave him an inkwell and when the cat came to eat the mouse, it swallowed the inkwell and the mouse crawled out of the dead cat's throat.

Are we sure this is a children's collection??

Picture illustrated by W. Robinson.

Bibliography: W.D. Rouse. The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India. Link to text.