A Widow and His Son

A Widow and His Son

A long time ago, a widow lived with her only son. One day the son went to a stream and caught a fish from there. After coming home, he gave the fish to his mother to cook.

The mother was very happy to see that fish and immediately she put it in a big vessel filled with water and put it on the fire to boil. When the water started boiling, the fish started dancing here and there in the water and it seemed to her as if there were not one but many fishes in that water.

When the woman saw it, she said, One of these is mine and one is my sons, one is mine and one is my sons, one is mine and one is my sons. In this way we will eat five fish each. Saying this, she took out a fish from the vessel and ate it. After eating, she looked into the vessel and was very sad to see that there was not a single fish in it.

At the same time her son came home and said to his mother – Mother, I am very hungry, lets eat food.

The mother brought the food but the son could not find the fish he had caught anywhere in it, so he asked his mother Mother, what happened to the fish that I had brought

The mother told him that she had eaten it. Hearing this, the son became very sad that now he would not be able to eat meat with his food. His mother was also very sad. Soon she thought of a trick. She got up, took a red seed and stuck it on her back with wax and went towards a river where wild animals used to come to drink water. Reaching that river, she bent down and started drinking water.

Then a deer came there to drink water but on seeing the red coloured seed, he ran away in fear.

On the way, he met a deer and told him what he had seen on the river that day. But the deer did not believe what the deer said. So the deer took him to the river to show him what he had seen.

Now the red seed was still there, so the deer also got scared seeing it and both of them ran away from there. Soon other animals wild boars, bears, leopards, monkeys, elephants etc. also came there to drink water but they too got scared seeing the red seed and ran away.

When they could not drink the water due to fear of the red seed, they all had a meeting to decide what to do with the red seed that the woman had stuck on her backside. It was decided that the monkey should go there and remove the red seed from the womans backside.

So the monkey slowly went behind the woman and as he tried to remove the red seed from her backside, his hand got stuck to her backside. He screamed in fear.

Hearing his scream, other animals also got scared and started running here and there.

Meanwhile an elephant was coming in that direction. Seeing everyone running, he also started running. Many animals were killed in this running and many animals died under the feet of that elephant.

While running away, the elephants leg got stuck in the root of a big tree, breaking his leg and he also fell down and died. The woman went home and called her neighbours. All of them together had a great feast of the meat of the dead animals. There was so much meat that both the men and the animals ate a lot, but still some meat was left over. Seeing this, the animals decided to distribute the remaining meat among all the animals. The oldest animal in age will get the elephants leg.

After much deliberation, it was found that the smallest mouse among all the animals, Changbai, was the oldest, so the elephants leg was given to him.

The mouse found the elephants leg, but it was very small in comparison to the elephants leg, so how could it take it away

Now since he could not carry it alone, he called his sisters son Zebi8 to help him.

But that leg was so heavy that even both of them together could not lift it. In fact, in all this effort, more air came out of Chhangbais stomach ooh ooh ooh. Hearing the sound of air coming out, his nephew Zabi laughed a lot, laughed a lot.

Seeing Zabi laughing, Changbai got so angry that he hit him hard on the back. Poor Zabi almost fell down.

Then he dug a hole near the elephants leg and made his burrow and decided to stay there. He kept eating the elephants leg for many days.

It is said that when Changbai was forced to let go of the air, Zabi laughed so much that his eyes became very small and his buttocks also became very small in comparison to his head because Changbai had hit him very hard there.