Four Friends

Once upon a time in a small village lived four Brahmins named Satyanand, Vidhyanand,
Dharmanand and Sivanand. They had grown up together to become good friends.
Satyanand, Vidhyanand and Dharmanand were very knowledgeable. But Sivanand spent
most of his time eating and sleeping. He was considered foolish by everyone.

Once famine struck the village. All the crops failed. Rivers and lakes started to dry up. The
people of the villages started moving to other villages to save their lives.

“We also need to move to another place soon or else we will also die like many others," said
Satyanand. They all agreed with him.

“But what about Sivanand?" Asked Satyanand.

“Do we need him with us? He has no skills or learning. We cannot take him with us," replied
Dharmanand. “He will be a burden on us."

“How can we leave him behind? He grew up with us," said Vidhyanand. “We will share what
ever we earn equally among the four of us."

They all agreed to take Sivanand along with them.

They packed all necessary things and set out for a nearby town. On the way, they had to
cross a forest.

As they were walking through the forest, they came across the bones of an animal. They
became curious and stopped to take a closer look at the bones.

“Those are the bones of a lion," said Vidhyanand. The others agreed.

“This is a great opportunity to test our learning," said Satyanand.

“I can put the bones together." So saying, he brought the bones together to form the
skeleton of a lion.

“Dharmanand said, “I can put muscles and tissue on it." Soon a lifeless lion lay before them.

“I can breathe life into that body." said Vidhyanand.

But before he could continue, Sivanand jumped up to stop him. “No. Don't! If you put life into
that lion, it will kill us all," he cried.

“Oh you coward! You can’t stop me from testing my skills and learning," shouted an angry
Vidhyanand. “You are here with us only because I requested the others to let you come
along."

“Then please let me climb that tree first,’ said a frightened Sivanand running towards the
nearest tree. Just as Sivanand pulled himself on to the tallest branch of the tree Vidhyanand
brought life into the lion. Getting up with a deafening roar, the lion attacked and killed the
three learned Brahmins.
 True Friends Love You Anyway

Lord Krishna and Sudama were childhood friends. While Krishna thrived and prospered,
Sudama didn’t. He lead the life of a poor Brahmin man, living in a small hut with his wife and
kids. Most days, the kids wouldn’t even get enough to eat from what Sudama got as alms.
One day, his wife suggested that he go and ask his friend Krishna for help.

Sudama was reluctant to seek favors, but he also didn’t want his kids to suffer. So his wife
borrows some rice from the neighbors to make some rice snacks that Krishna liked, and
gave it to Sudama to take it to his friend. Sudama took it and set out to Dwaraka. He was
amazed at the gold that was used to build the city. He reached the palace gates and was
obstructed by the guards, who judged him by his torn dhoti and poor appearance.

Sudama requested the guards to at least inform Krishna that his friend Sudama has come to
meet him. The guard, although reluctant, goes and informs the lord. On hearing that Sudama
was here, Krishna stops doing whatever he was doing and runs barefoot to meet his
childhood friend.

Krishna hugs Sudama welcomes him to his abode and treats him with utmost love and
respect. Sudama, ashamed of the poor man’s rice snacks he got for Krishna, tries to hide it.
But the all-knowing Krishna asks Sudama for his gift and eats his favorite rice snacks that
his friend brought for him.

Krishna and his friend spend time laughing and talking about their childhood but Sudama,
overwhelmed by the kindness and compassion showed by his friend, is unable to ask
Krishna for help. When he returns home, Sudama finds that his hut has been replaced by a
huge mansion and his wife and kids are dressed in fine clothes.

Sudama realized how lucky he was to have a true friend like Krishna. He didn’t even ask, but
Krishna knew what Sudama wanted and gave it to him.

Moral

True friends do not distinguish between rich and poor. They are always there for you when
you need them.
 The Son of The Lioness
Once upon a time there was a tremendous fuss and quarrel among all the animals. They
were arguing hotly about who had the finest children! Everyone of them from the frogs and
the caterpillars to the rabbits and the rats declared that no families had ever been born like
their families and that it was a great pity their children and grandchildren and great
grandchildren were not numerous enough to fill the whole world. Anyway, they said, they
would go on doing their best. The caterpillars and frogs would lay eggs by the hundred. The
rabbits would make new warrens and the rats would take possession of ever so many more
drains. Then, surely, it would be agreed that a caterpillar, or a frog, a rat, or a rabbit, had the
glory of giving to the world the finest children that had ever been born in it.

They all agreed about one thing, in spite of the arguing that they would wait just one year
and then they would go to King Jupiter on his mountain and ask him to settle the matter for
them. So, for a year, they laid their dispute aside. At the end of it, they sent a message to the
king of the mountain saying that they would like to have the privilege of calling upon him and
would bring all their families along with them.

King Jupiter sat on his shining throne and up the sides of the mountain came the long strings
of animals. Mount Olympus had seen some strange sights, but perhaps this procession was
the oddest of all. First came Father and Mother Hedgehog. Very squat they were – very
brown and prickly. They were followed by seven little hedgehogs just as prickly just as brown
and just as squat. When they saw King Jupiter, they were all so startled that they rolled
themselves up into balls and lay quite still in front of him. But even in this rather ridiculous
position. Mother Hedgehog might be heard murmuring from the middle of her stiffened
spines, many things about the beauty and number of her children.

The hedgehogs had to make way, however, for a much larger party - a whole family of
lizards. Together with Father Lizard and Mother Lizard, there were twelve little misses and
masters of the same name. They were smooth yellowish little creatures with quick legs and
tails that flicked about like whips. They darted all over the top of the mountain, catching flies
and no doubt amused King Jupiter very much. But they, too, had to move aside to allow him
to give an opinion upon a colony of frogs.

If numbers were to win the prize of excellence, surely the frogs had it! The Father and the
Mother, solemn, goggle-eyed and fat, were followed by at least a hundred of the sizes of a
thumb, just like themselves. They had all come straight out of a shallow pond in a heavy
shower that very morning, scrambling through the wet grass and hopping along the turnpike
road, such that the country folks thought they had fallen out of the clouds together with the
rain. But they hadn’t done any such thing! They were only skipping along after their Father
and Mother to hear what King Jupiter had to say about them.
So it went on all through that strange and wonderful day on Mount Olympus. The caterpillars
came, the rats came…the rabbits came. And all of them brought a regular tribe of children,
none of them a year old. Then up trotted the foxes and the badgers the weasels and the
stoats each with four or five youngsters apiece. But at last, up the hill path, came a lioness,
beautiful and strong. And she had only one child, a little creature with golden eyes and
splendid limbs. She led him up to Jupiter and sitting on her haunches, surveyed her glorious
child in silence. Then King Jupiter came down from his bright throne and holding up his
mace gave his decision in a clear and ringing voice.

"Listen, you Fathers and Mothers of rabbits, hedgehogs and frogs! It is true that you have all
produced a great many children in the past year and that the lioness has produced only one.
But that one is a Lion! To the lioness, therefore, I give the prize. Her child shall, from now be
called Royal. I name him, from today, the king of all the beasts."

He touched the little lion’s head for a moment with his hand. Then the lioness turned away
still in silence and led her son back to her cave at the foot of the mountain. She had taken no
part in the boasting of the lesser animals, yet she had always known that her son was the
finest creature ever given to the world. She had only one child - but as Jupiter had said, that
only child was a Lion.

MORAL : It is not the quantity but the quality that matters.

 Good Company, Bad Company
Two parrots built a nest in a banyan tree. They lived with their two young ones, which they
took good care of. The mother and the father parrot went out to gather food in the morning
and came back home by evening. One day, when their parents were away, the young
parrots were taken by a cruel hunter.
One of the birds managed to escape and flew away from the hunter. He ended up at a
hermitage and grew up listening to kind words and compassion. The hunter put the other
parrot in a cage, and soon it learned a few words and phrases. The hunter and his family
were crude and didn’t care much about kind words.
One day, a passerby was resting outside the hunter’s hut. Sensing someone outside, the
parrot said, “Fool, why are you here? Fool! Leave! I’ll cut your throat”. Scared, the traveler
went away, and on his journey, he reached the hermitage where the other parrot was. The
parrot at the hermitage spoke, “Welcome traveler. You are free to stay here as long as you
want”.
Surprised, the traveler told the parrot that he encountered a similar parrot elsewhere and it
was very cruel. How is that you are so kind?” The parrot replied, “That must be my brother. I
live with the sages, and my brother lives with hunters. I learned the sage’s language, and my
brother learned the hunter’s language. The company we keep decides who we will be”.

Moral
Keep good company if you want to be a good person.
 The Tree Apples
The old apple tree stood in the orchard with the other trees, and all summer long it had
stretched out its branches wide to catch the rain and the sun to make its apples grow round
and ripe. Now it was fall, and on the old apple tree were three great apples as yellow as gold
and larger than any other apples in the whole orchard. The apple tree stretched and reached
as far as it could, until the branch on which the three gold apples grew hung over the orchard
wall. There were the three great apples, waiting for some one to pick them, and as the wind
blew through the leaves of the apple tree it seemed to sing:
"Here in the orchard are apples three,
Who uses one well shall a treasure see."
And one morning Gerald came down the lane that passed by the orchard wall. He looked
longingly at the three gold apples, wishing, wishing that he might have one. Just then the
wind sang its song again in the leaves of the apple tree and, plump, down to the ground,
right at Gerald's feet, fell one of the three gold apples.
He picked it up and turned it round and round in his hands. How sweet it smelled, and how
mellow and juicy it was! Gerald could think of nothing so good to do with such a beautiful
ripe apple as to eat it. He put it to his mouth and took a great bite of it, then another bite, and
another. Soon there was nothing left of the apple but the core, which Gerald threw away. He
smacked his lips and went on his way, but the wind in the apple trees sang, sorrowfully, after
him:
"Here in the orchard are apples two,
But gone is the treasure that fell for you."
And after a while Hilda came down the lane that passed by the orchard wall. She looked up
at the two beautiful gold apples that hung on the branch of the old apple tree, and she
listened to the wind as it sang in the branches to her:
"Here in the orchard are apples two,
A treasure they hold for a child like you."
Then the wind blew harder and, plump, an apple fell in the lane right in front of Hilda.She
picked it up joyfully. She had never seen so large and so golden an apple. She held it
carefully in her clasped hands and thought what a pity it would be to eat it, because then it
would be gone.
"I will keep this gold apple always," Hilda said, and she wrapped it up in the clean
handkerchief that was in her pocket. Then Hilda went home, and there she laid away in a
drawer the gold apple that the old apple tree had given her, closing the drawer tightly. The
apple lay inside, in the dark, and all wrapped up, for many days, until it spoiled. And when
Hilda next went down the lane and past the orchard, the wind in the apple tree sang to her:
"Only one apple where once there were two,
Gone is the treasure I gave to you."
Last of all, Rudolph went down the lane one fine fall morning when the sun was shining
warm and the wind was out. There, hanging over the orchard wall, he saw just one great
gold apple that seemed to him the most beautiful apple that he had ever seen. As he stood
looking up at it, the wind in the apple tree sang to him, and it said:
"Round and gold on the apple tree,
A wonderful treasure, hanging, see!"
Then the wind blew harder, and down fell the last gold apple of the three into Rudolph's
waiting hands.
He held it a long time and looked at it as Gerald and Hilda had, thinking how good it would
be to eat, and how pretty it would be to look at if he were to save it. Then he decided not to
do either of these things. He took his jack-knife out of his pocket and cut the gold apple in
half, straight across, and exactly in the middle between the blossom and the stem.
Oh, the surprise that waited for Rudolph inside the apple! There was a star, and in each
point of the star lay a small black seed. Rudolph carefully took out all the seeds and climbed
over the orchard wall, holding them in his hand. The earth in the orchard was still soft, for the
frost had not yet come. Rudolph made holes in the earth and in each hole he dropped an
apple seed. Then he covered up the seeds and climbed back over the wall to eat his apple,
and then go on his way.
But as Rudolph walked down the lane, the orchard wind followed him, singing to him from
every tree and bush,
"A planted seed is a treasure won.
The work of the apple is now well done."
 The Struggles of Our Life
Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that
she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the
time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on
a high fire.
Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot
and ground coffee beans in the third pot. He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word
to his daughter.
The daughter, moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing. After twenty
minutes he turned off the burners.He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a
bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. He then ladled the coffee out and
placed it in a cup.
Turning to her, he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs and coffee,” she hastily replied.
“Look closer” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft.
He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the
hard-boiled egg.
Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.
“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.
He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same
adversity-the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently. The potato went in
strong, hard and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak.
The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the
boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the ground coffee beans
were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and
created something new.
“Which one are you?” he asked his daughter.
“When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a
coffee bean?”

Moral of the story:

In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is
how you choose to react to it and what you make out of it. Life is all about leaning, adopting
and converting all the struggles that we experience into something positive.
The Crane and The Snake
In a forest close to the river bank mere lived a crane with his wife. They were very unhappy.
Every time the wife laid eggs in their nest, a big black cobra who lived in a hollow in the tree,
would eat them up. The crane had a friend the crab. He went to his friend the crab and
shared his misery. "I feel so hopeless….That sneaking thief has eaten our eggs again,"
complained the crane angrily.

“Don’t worry," said the crab comfortingly. “You need not be hopeless when you have a friend
like me. We will come up with a solution."
The crab sat to think of a plan. Suddenly he jumped up and rushed to the crane.
“Friend, I have a wonderful plan," said the crab and whispered something into the crane’s
car.
The crane flew back to his nest and told his wife all about the crab’s plan. He was very
excited.
“Are you sure this will work?" asked the wife.
“I hope we are not making a mistake. Think twice before going ahead with the plan."

But the crane was eager to try out the plan. The crane flew down to the river bank and
began to fish. He caught several little fishes and went down to the hole in which a mongoose
lived. He dropped a fish at the mouth of the hole. Then he took another fish and dropped it a
little further away from the first one. Repeating this, he made a trail of fishes leading to the
tree where his nest was.

The mongoose smelt the fish and came out of the hole. “Ah, a fish!" exclaimed the
mongoose joyfully and quickly ate it up. He then followed the trail of fishes. As he neared the
tree where the cranes and the snake lived, the trail ended. Finding no more fishes, he looked
around.

Suddenly he came across the black cobra at the foot of the tree. Seeing the mongoose, the
cobra fought for his life. Both fought for a long time and in the end the mongoose killed the
snake. The cranes who were watching the fight from their nest sighed with relief.

The next day the mongoose began to follow the same trail hoping to find more food. When
he came to the tree where the trail ended, he decided to climb the tree in search of food.

The cranes who were away at the river bank returned to find the mongoose climbing down
the tree. On looking in their nest, they discovered that this time, the mongoose had eaten up
all their eggs.
“Alas! We got rid of one enemy only to find another," said the crane to his wife.

The Lion and The Hare

Once in a forest there lived a lion who was very proud of his strength. He would kill any
animal which came in his way just for fun. All the animals in the forest were worried about
their survival.
“If the lion keeps this up, none of us will be left in the forest," said the bear.
“He kills much more than he really needs to," squeaked the little hare.
“We have to come up with something to stop this massacre," said the monkey. So they all
joined together and went to meet the lion.
“O king of the forest, we have come to make a small request," they all said to the lion
“Now what would that be?" asked the amused lion.
“You are the king of the forest, but soon there will be no animals to rule over. So we beg you
to stop this unreasonable killing and we promise that one of us will come to you everyday for
your food," pleaded all the animals with the lion.
So from that day, the animals drew lots to decide on who was to go to the lion as his prey.
One day, the lots fell on the hare to visit the lion. All the animals consoled him and sent him
on his way to meet his doom. But the hare was a clever animal. He did not want to die at the
hands of the cruel lion. He saw an old well on the way. It was very deep and was a danger
for all the animals. He thought of a plan.
The little hare went to sleep near the well all day. In the evening, he made his way to the
lion's den. The lion was terribly hungry by then and when he saw a tiny hare coming towards
him, he became furious.
“You little thing, how dare you come so late? How dare they send such a small animal? I will
kill them all," the angry lion roared.
“It is not my fault, O mighty lion. There were three other hares with me. But on the way here,
another lion attacked us. I just managed to escape. The other three hares were eaten by
that lion,"said the hare.
“What? Another lion in my jungle? Take me to him immediately," said the lion in a fit of rage.
The hare took the lion to the well and pointed it out to him from a distance. The other lion
jumped out at us from inside the well when we tried to drink some water from the well. The
lion rushed angrily to the well and peeped in.
There inside the well he could see another lion glaring at him. What the foolish lion did not
realise in his anger was that he was looking at his reflection. He roared angrily at the other
lion. He heard an answering roar.
It was only the echo of his own roar. But the lion thought that the other lion was challenging
him. He jumped in and landed inside with a loud splash. And that was the end of the wicked
lion.