Long ago, in a small town where most houses stood in quiet rows of sun-dried mud, there lived a businessman named Anguchetty. He earned well and lived comfortably, but he never thought much about saving. Money came in, money went out. That seemed reason enough for him. When a violent storm swept through the town and flattened his house in a single night, he did not brood over the loss. He simply hired masons and ordered them to rebuild it quickly.
The walls went up fast. Perhaps too fast. The mud had not fully dried when the house began to look complete again. One night, a burglar crept toward it and cut a hole through one of the damp walls. As he tried to push himself inside, the heavy mud loosened and collapsed. By dawn, he lay crushed beneath the wall he had broken.
His relatives did not wait long. They marched to the royal court and demanded justice. In their eyes, the house belonged to Anguchetty. If the house had caused a death, then Anguchetty must answer for it.
When the king questioned him, Anguchetty spoke without hesitation. He did not see why he should suffer for someone else’s mistake. The mason built the wall. The mason should answer for it. That was the first moment of blame shifting, though no one in the court called it by that name.
The mason arrived and defended himself just as quickly. He insisted that the mud had been too wet. Any wall built with such material would weaken. The supplier should be held accountable, not him. The supplier then stood before the throne and explained that he had carried the mud in a wide-mouthed pot. Water had collected inside it. If anyone deserved punishment, it was the potter.
The potter came forward, nervous but firm. He admitted that while shaping the pot, he had grown distracted. A woman had passed by. His attention slipped for a moment. That was all. The woman was summoned next. She explained that she had walked that path only because the goldsmith had delayed delivering her necklace. If he had kept his word, she would not have crossed the potter’s sight.
By now, the court no longer felt like a place of justice. It felt like a circle where each person tried passing the blame before it reached them. The goldsmith struggled to defend himself. Pressed by the king, he stumbled over his words. The king, impatient and eager to end the matter, declared that the goldsmith would be hanged.
The decision came swiftly. Too swiftly. It showed clear poor decision making, though no one dared say so aloud. Instead of examining what had truly happened, the king moved toward punishment. Authority, in that moment, began to look less like justice and more like a misuse of power.
Facing death, the goldsmith made one final attempt to save himself. He claimed that a Komatti merchant had delayed supplying gold. Without gold, how could he craft the necklace? Once again, responsibility slipped away. No one paused for taking responsibility. Each accusation pushed the danger forward.
The Komatti trembled as the court’s eyes turned toward him. Then the goldsmith made a strange argument. He said he was too thin for the gibbet prepared for execution. The Komatti, sturdier in build, would fit it better. Logic had long since left the room.
At that moment, two courtiers began arguing loudly. The king demanded silence and demanded to know the reason. One of them claimed that anyone hanged at that exact hour would be reborn as a king in the next life. He wanted that fate for himself. The other insisted on the same privilege.
The king’s face darkened. No one could claim kingship in his realm but him. Pride flared hotter than reason. In a sudden act that revealed the deep failure of leadership in his rule, he declared that he himself would be hanged. Better that than allow another to share his imagined destiny.
And so, through anger and wounded pride, authority turned into abuse of authority. The court obeyed. The king died not because of rebellion or invasion, but because he could not separate ego from judgment.
Later, the court chose a wiser man to govern the kingdom. People whispered about the strange chain of events that had begun with a collapsed wall and ended with a fallen ruler. What lingered was not the burglar’s fate, but the lesson beneath it. When leaders ignore accountability in leadership, when they separate power and responsibility, the damage spreads quietly. Systems weaken. Fear grows. The consequences of poor leadership do not always appear at once, but they arrive.
And often, they arrive at the top.
If You Liked This Folk Tale…
If this Tamil Nadu tale about blame shifting and the fragile balance between power and responsibility stayed with you, you may also enjoy our previous folk tale from Himachal Pradesh. While this story shows how ego and the failure of leadership can bring a ruler down, the Himachali tale explores a very different kind of strength — one rooted in kindness and what true wealth really means. Together, the two stories offer a beautiful contrast between authority and humility, pride and generosity. You can read it here.
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 Internet Archive.