Home To Roost

Jayaram and his wife Ganga were hard-working peasants. While Jayaram tended to his fields, his wife looked after the home. As they did not have any children, she had plenty of time to devote to her hobby of rearing poultry.

Undoubtedly, she was very good at raising chickens, for every clutch of eggs hatched to the last one. Soon, Ganga had a large number of birds producing plenty of eggs, which the neighbors purchased. Sometimes, Ganga would sell some of the older birds in the market.

Every time Jayaram looked at all these chickens scratching and feeding in the garden, his mind became full of mouth-watering thoughts of a succulent roasted chicken. No matter how much he begged, implored, and cajoled with flattering entreaties, his wife flatly refused to kill any of her chickens for him to eat. Longing for the taste of roast chicken, Jayaram pondered and pondered how he could get around his wife. Then he had a bright idea.

When he arrived home that evening, in an excited voice, he said to his wife, “Today, I met a famous astrologer on the road. He told me that to get better crops, I must appease the gods by placing a roasted chicken in the hole in the trunk of that old peepal tree on our land.”

Ganga swallowed this story with a good deal of doubt, but thinking it might be true, she agreed to kill and cook one of her precious chickens.

The following morning, Jayaram, with the cooked chicken carefully wrapped, set off for his fields with grand ideas of having a wonderful feed when dinner time came. He certainly put the chicken in the peepal tree, but merely for safekeeping. At midday, he made a beeline for the tree and hastily unwrapped the chicken. He tore off a leg and took a big bite. “My, this is good,” he thought.

But standing behind a nearby tree was his wife, who had never really believed the story of the astrologer. As she watched her husband eating, or rather gobbling up, the chicken, her temper boiled over. She picked up a stick and belabored him until he was black and blue.

Returning home, Ganga was still in a towering rage and decided to go home to her mother. Getting a large basket, she busily packed all her possessions, then went outside to feed her chickens before she departed.

With the basket on her head, off went Ganga to her mother’s house. When she arrived there, between tears and sobs, she told her mother the sorry tale of her no-good husband. She had no sooner related her story than the lid of the basket flew open, and up popped the head of her husband.

Poor Jayaram was full of apologies to his wife, but his mother-in-law soon interrupted: “A likely story, I must say,” she said harshly. “You two made all this up so that you could come here for me to feed and keep you. Out you both go, and next time think of a better story.”

Jayaram and Ganga slowly made their way back to their own home. Jayaram was very subdued, but at least he never asked for roast chicken again.