Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In one of the tales in Nitin Pai’s Nitopadesha , an elephant sees a tiger getting ready to attack a deer and its fawn. If she thumped the ground, the deer and her fawn could escape. But that would mean the tiger would instead attack a stag on the other side. The question of the story: what should the elephant do? Either choice would mean the death of someone.   The tale takes us through the way one would assess. Is saving two lives better than saving one? But saving two lives means sentencing the stag to death – who gave the elephant the authority to decide that? Round and round the arguments go. The moment one has an argument for one, there is a counterargument for the other. We might have the luxury of time, but the elephant has to make a choice within moments. Worst of all, not making a choice still leads to the deer’s death.   No, it’s not a Vikram - Vetaal story with a right answer. Instead, the moral is to remind us that governance is hard and involves such decisions. ...

An interesting story in Nitin Pai’s Nitopadesha is the “The Case of the Wilting Orchards”. A wise but unconventional cat is invited to a kingdom where the orchards had started dieing slowly and the vegetable gardens were failing. What was the cause, they wanted this cat to find out.   After going all over town, the cat mentions that that a large number of rats were moving up and down a hill in the town. Do you know why, he asked his host. To prospect for gems which are abundant in this region, his host responded, but can you get back to the mystery at hand. After thinking a bit, the cat says he had found the answer! The rats, he said, are digging everywhere searching for gems. Their digging is damaging the roots of the trees and plants. The gemstone hunters are either unaware or don’t care about the side-effect of their activity.   What is the solution, asked his hosts. Should we kill the rats? No, said the cat, they are just earning their livelihood and that is not w...

Nitopadesha by Nitin Pai is a play on the famous Hitopadesha tales. The book has short tales with animals as the main characters, and are meant as “moral tales for good citizens”. What makes for a good society? What is needed for good governance? The answers are not always obvious or intuitive. ~~   Take this tale about a pond where there was an agreement that a duck would catch and eat only one fish per day. One day, a duck accidentally caught two fish. He got a lot more satisfaction and nobody seemed to have noticed. So he started eating two fish everyday. When the other ducks noticed this, they started copying him – some because that duck seemed happier; others because there seemed to be no penalty. Soon the fish count fell steeply, and the ducks struggled to find enough food. It got worse. With no food (fish) left, the ducks were forced to leave the pond whereupon they fell victims to the jackals in the forest.   The moral for citizens? Balance greed and respon...