| Animals spoke to
humans in those days. They still do. But men have lost the power of decoding
animals sounds. The story of the talking mongoose comes from the
Mahabharata. He had half his fur gilded in gold and he laughed at the
much-hyped greatness of the Pandava princes' horse sacrifice. He found it
unworthy compared to a poor family's gift of food to a guest.
Like normal mongooses, he used to be all brown
and rusty. Then he met these exceptionally generous folks. "The family was
so poor that they could not afford even the thinnest of rice gruels forget
about giving away gold to a humble animal like me!" the mongoose told his
fascinated audience at what was then touted to be the greatest giveaway of
food in the history of mankind.
It had so happened that by a stroke of luck,
the head of the family managed to win some grain and the family of four got
the rare fortune of getting a single roti each for them. That's when a
mendicant arrived with his outstretched bowl. Not to be outdone in the
dharma of the householder, which treats every guest like a god -- Unlike the
wisdom of modern marketing gurus that exhorts you to treat the customer
alone as king the husband gave his only roti to the beggar. But that wasn't
enough. So the wife chucked her sole share into the begging bowl. When that
too proved inadequate, the son and his pregnant bride donated their bread.
The mongoose got half his body turned into
gold when he accidentally rolled in the ashes of that poor family's hearth.
The hearth in turn got that power to transmute animal dross into pure gold
because of the family's transcendent generosity. Ever since, the mongoose
said he'd taken to rolling in 'myriad hearths' to change the rest of his
body. But unsuccessfully. He hadn't found a single one with enough altruism.
The myth ends with the disappearance of the mongoose. The original story
tells us that the animal was actually Anger metamorphosed by Jamadagni, the
sage who later became eponymous with toxic anger.
One moral of the mongoose for modern times is
that they just don't make hearths like they used to earlier. Another is that
it's easy to be generous when the going's good, how about giving when the
going gets rough? Lastly, cutting calories makes for great alchemy: it also
wins you great fame in the myths. |
