Just junior things

Paati is always keen to win junior’s attention and earn her stripes with him. She learns new stories to impress junior and keeps interesting Whatsapp forwards on her phone. After choosing a story that may potentially interest junior, she started telling him the story. The baseline for any story as per Junior’s norm is, it should be funny. If not funny, it should be something like a trivia that he can quote later. The story was about a battle of wits between various leaves as to who was the best. 

First went the plantain leaf, being the biggest of the lot. It proudly stated the facts about itself that, being the biggest it serves multiple utilities. It is the defacto food plate and comes from a proud family of a tree whose every single part is of use for all. Next went the betel leaf. It agreed to the points mentioned by Plantain, but despite all the food that can be served on that leaf, it needs the betel leaf to digest them in the end and hence she is the best. The curry leaf protested saying that for the very food to be tasty, its presence is needed and whether it gets digested or served, the ingestion is made pleasant only because of her. The tulsi leaf that was growing near by was silently listening to everything. All the 3 leaves asked her opinion for which she simply said, I don’t know anything else but to serve god and I am grateful to be his favorite leaf. The rest of the leaves realized their folly and moral of the story being how arrogance/proud are not a virtue.

Junior silently listened to the story and said, so this is about how Tulsi is better is it.

Paati replied, in a way yes. But the moral is how one shouldn’t be proud.

He said, let me tell you a story and started how Rukmini was always jealous of the attention shown by Krishna to Sathyabama. She wanted to go one up on Bama who always worshipped Krishna with Tulsi leaves. One day she did a big puja with all gold ornaments in pomp and glory. The entire town was impressed with the lavishness of the puja. But Krishna was relatively calm. To impress him further she did more lavish things which didn’t seem to majorly change the mood of Krishna. Finally, when she asked, how he feels about her spend, he asked her to keep all the jewels on a weighing scale on one side. He called Bama to keep a Tulsi leaf on the other scale. How much ever Rukmini tried to load up her side, the Tulsi leaf remained heavier than the other side. Rukmini learnt her lesson and the magnanimity of Tulsi. 

Now it was the Paati’s turn to be impressed for she had forgotten about this story. The takeaway for her being a new story to tell her friends as to how junior trumped her in story telling.