Long, long ago, there lived a poor farmer named Rajdev. On his small plot, Rajdev grew seasonal vegetables. While the money he made wasn’t enough, he was content with whatever little he had.
During the winter season, he grew cauliflower on his plot. People from faraway lands came to check out his fresh, creamy-looking, snow-white cauliflowers. Rajdev’s wife advised him to keep a vigil at night, for someone might try to steal their crop. Every day, after having dinner with his family, Rajdev would go out into the fields and rest on a platform made of thatch and bamboo. After a day’s hard work, he would soon drift off. Two nights went by in this fashion.
However, something unusual happened on the third night. Rajdev woke up in the middle of the night after hearing a noise. But everything around him looked still. The jackals in the nearby woods were also at rest.
Rajdev looked around, suspecting something. He could see a shining white cloud slowly descending from the night sky. The cloud made a perfect landing in the middle of his cauliflower fields. From the cloud emerged an elephant, glowing as though made of silver. The elephant uprooted and ate twenty cauliflowers before it stepped back into the cloud and disappeared into the sky. He ran home and told his wife everything he had seen. Initially, she didn’t believe one word he said. However, she had no choice but to believe him when it happened again the following day!
‘It must be Lord Indra’s elephant, Airavata. The next time it shows up, just hang on to its tail and pay a visit to heaven,’ she advised her husband.
Rajdev did so when the elephant appeared again the following day.
Her wife was right. He had indeed reached heaven! The place was brimming with golden palaces and silver paved streets. Rajdev enjoyed swimming in the cool streams. He would take in the refreshing fragrance of the heavenly flowers while listening to the beautiful songs of birds. He was a regular visitor to the palace kitchen, where he would eat the mouth-watering halwa.
The next day, when the villagers heard about his remarkable feat, they wanted Rajdev to take them to heaven. After hearing about the delicious halwa, they wanted to taste it, too. Everyone waited patiently for the elephant to eat the cauliflower heads. When it started climbing up, Rajdev grabbed its tail. The first man caught the end of Rajdev’s kurta. In fact, one by one, every man grabbed the end of the kurta of the one above them. They all slowly ascended into heaven with the elephant.
A fat villager lost his patience as the trip to heaven was taking too long. He kept asking how much delicious halwa they could all eat. Irritated after listening to the same question over and over, Rajdev stretched his arms out to give them a glimpse into heaven. However, he ended up losing his grip on the elephant’s tail.
Down came all of them, tumbling on one another. The shocked villagers slowly picked themselves up and walked back to their homes, disappointed. Their dream of taking a trip to heaven and eating the heavenly halwa had come to a bitter end, and the elephant never came back.
Kalai is passionate about reading and reinterpreting folk tales from all over the country. Write to her at kalai.muse@gmail.com to know more about her.
Folk tale adopted and abridged from SiwanIndia.