In the kingdom of Vijaynagar, King Virendra Pratap was on a lookout for a person who could be appointed as a managing head for his agriculture department.
“Your majesty, you can select one of your farmers to hold the post,” suggested Veermal, the young, skinny adviser to the king.
The king who sat, listening to Veermal, on his exquisite throne with his chin resting on the palm of his right hand, said “Veermal, go and fetch me the list of the farmers who are willing to hold the post.”
Veermal went away and laid the king’s proposal before the farmers, who were more than happy to apply for the post as it would get them a seat in the kingdom.
After two days, Veermal presented himself before the king and revealed, pointing at the long list he held in his hand, “Your highness, I have returned with the names, but the matter of concern is that more than four hundred farmers are willing to fill in the coveted post.”
“More than four hundred!” the king exclaimed. “We need to devise a way to further sift the best from the rest.” He called upon his gardener and asked him to draw a one meter wide circle in the backyard of his garden.
Next day, he invited all the four hundred applicants to the marked place. The applicants, all farmers, looked pleased in their tidy, colourful dresses.
“Is everyone interested in holding the highest post for agriculture?” the king inquired in a loud voice.
A quick ‘yes’ reverberated in the arena for a moment.
“Is everyone ready to face the challenge of burrowing a six-foot deep pit inside this marked circle before the day ends?” the king squealed, pointing his finger at the marked place.
Again, cheers and hoots with a resounding ‘yes’ enveloped the air, as burrowing a six-feet deep pit was a child’s play for any farmer.
“But the burrowing is not to be done with a spade but with a fork and spoon!” the king continued, raising his right hand in anticipation of seeing someone raise his hand to confirm his acceptance of proposal.
An air of silence and gloom engulfed the atmosphere. Not only wasn’t a raised hand to be seen, the hitherto giggling crowd had suddenly cut a long face. Each head had turned down with some sneakily trying to notice the person coming up with a ‘yes’ to the proposal. A big chaos was evident on everyone’s face.
“Is anyone coming forward to take up the challenge?” the king repeated with a worried frown.
But again no ‘yes’ was to be heard.
By the end of the day just two persons, Ramprasad and Kripanath showed their willingness to go ahead with the challenge. The king was happy to see the flood of applicants being reduced to just two with the condition of ‘a spoon and fork’ acting as a barrier to many.
The king asked both the applicants to come prepared at the same place on Sunday, a holiday, so that more and more people could see them working their way out to the esteemed post.
In the farmer’s circle everyone was mocking at Ramprasad and Kripanath, who had accepted to accomplish a seemingly impossible task setup by the king. Some even wanted to call them fools, for what they had chosen to do was only a fool can choose.
There was so much negativity and criticism in the air that by Sunday, Ramprasad was sufficiently convinced that the task he had agreed to accomplish was an impossible one, so accordingly he decided to quit the competition.
Now it was all left to Kripanath to prove everybody wrong. On the appointed day, he was up before a thousand people, who had gathered there for the much awaited event they had ever seen in their lives.
Kripanath, who arrived at the scene clad in a white dhoti, looked calm as he took an overview of the crowd assembled there. By now all eyes were carefully set upon him. After the king gave a go-ahead, Kripanath started poking the earth with a fork. The soft earth was easily getting poked but the biggest hindrance was to move away the loosened soil, which Kripanath moved with the spoon he had brought with him. His incessant effort made him look committed to his goal.
Half the day passed and he had not even managed to dig a two-foot deep pit; time was running out, but he kept with his efforts, applying harder with each passing hour. All the calculations showed that he would not make it in any probability. Again a quarter day passed and he had barely managed to touch the mark of three-feet. But so devoted was he, that he continued without fail.
While he was poking and moving the earth at around four-feet, a sound of a metal, that he had accidently hit, made him come to an abrupt halt. He thought that some useless iron pieces were hit.
He curiously looked inside the pit, only to notice that a yellow glow was sprouting beneath the earth he was poking. A few more poking and moving of earth led him to realize that he had accidently hit upon a gold brick!
The king who was watching all this for a while, asked him to come to his chamber. “Have you found anything?” he enquired.
“Yes, yes your majesty, I have found a gold brick. I don’t know how it came there,” Kripanath answered showing the dug gold.
The king began, “Your hitting at gold brick was not an accident! I had intentionally got it buried there at a level slightly above four feet. My intention was never to see a man who could dig a six-foot deep pit with a spoon and fork, but a man who is willing to tackle a demanding, arduous task head-on; I just wanted to find a courageous man who is not afraid of the magnitude of his goal.”
“But why did you choose to place the brick at around four feet only?” Kripanath, who was listening to king with rapt attention, enquired in a lower tone.
The king pointed, “I wanted to see a man dig four-foot deep pit only and not six, which was not feasible. I fixed it at four only because by the time a person digs four-foot deep pit, he would have proved his love for his work, however demanding. The high-sound of six-feet was just to sift the committed ones from the herd, and it turned out that only you were committed!” Looking at Kripanath, he continued, “The other, Ramprasad who opted to quit at the last moment was no better than the rest as he willfully ignored the opportunity to enter into a competition which had just two competitors — this all because he believed the misguiding people more than he believed in himself.”
Kripanath was not only made the head of state for agriculture but was also rewarded with the dug gold.
Moral: Luck favours only the willing, deserving and striving. It never shines upon the non-performers. Opportunities come to everyone but those who fail to recognize it call it their ill-luck. Remember, at the end, it’s always luck following the hard work and never the other way round.
END
© Anchit Barnwal
