Short Story – A Welcome of Raja Khushwant Vinder
Photo credit: alive from morguefile.com
That time raja Bhanukumar was ruling in East India. Swapnil was his prime minister. Swapnil was known for his excellent wit and handling situations of problems with ease.
Once raja’s court started. Swapnil was yet to arrive. Raja was a bit tensed. He shared his problem with all, present in the court then. Raja then sat demoralised, tensed on his chair and started starring at the floor and thinking deeply and waiting for Swapnil to arrive, so that he could give him a solution. All others in the court then started discussing among themselves and suggesting various solutions, but nothing seemed to be of raja’s choice.
Then as and when Swapnil arrived, raja quickly sat up straight and allowing Swapnil to bow at him, raised his hand to bless him and then allowing him to take his seat, started talking pointing towards him, “Swapnil, man I am in some great trouble and want you to find me a solution to that. Raja Khushwant Vinder of Patuliputra has just sent notice to us in the morning, that he wants to arrive at our state tomorrow morning and then stay for a couple of days before returning to his state again. So that’s indeed a good news for us, but what I am tensed of is his such a short notice to visit to our state. I had had expected him to give us some more time to specially arrange few more things for him before his arrival. You know we need to do that really as he is our guest. Also we can’t ask him to postpone his arrival for some days, as then he might be annoyed with us and never visit our state at all later. So do you have some solution to this Swapnil, in which we could make him delay his arrival for few days and also he doesn’t get annoyed and also visits later as per our wish?”
Swapnil nodded and said, “I do indeed have a solution for this, but Maharaj, please let me know exactly how many days time you need for that special arrangement to complete, before his arrival.”
To this the raja said, “Say some around 3 days.”
Swapnil bowed again and went out.
Just the next day when raja Khushwant Vinder was about to arrive, one more notice arrived from him instead of himself. The notice read, “Hey Bhanu, I am really sorry for this confusion, but suddenly I remember of some urgent work now and so cancelling my tour to your state for the time being. My urgent work would take next three days to complete and I would like to visit your state then if you don’t have any problem.”
Raja Bhanukumar immediately happily sent one more notice to raja Khushwant Vinder saying how he would be the happiest to welcome him after three days.
Raja Bhanukumar then a bit relaxed and happy started waiting for Swapnil to arrive to listen to the tricks he played, in which both the things the raja wanted, got fulfilled.
As and when Swapnil arrived, raja immediately was about to ask Swapnil, when Swapnil bowed and said, “Maharaj, I know you would be wondering what exceptional did I do that both of your wishes got fulfilled. Maharaj, I know that like you, there would be hardly any other raja who is so humble, so gentle, so kind and so down to earth with all his people. They would better like to stay with their dignity, prestige, attitude, status and arrogance. So quite obvious raja Khushwant Vinder would also fall in that category.
So I took help of that weakness of his. I wrote him a notice with your name stating that, “Its my pleasure to welcome you Khushwant. I feel also good to think that you would be visiting at such a time when only and only our state would be undergoing a festival that time. So you could also be a part of that festival of ours and enjoy its colour and activities. We name the festival as common-peoples’ days. These festival is of three days and during this period, we all myself and my men would be going to our poor peoples’ houses, do their work, whatever it may be, stay there, eat with them and mostly wash their feet wearing just a dhoti and nothing else.
In other words, the whole year they do activities which would help us, look after our survival, so for these 3 days we would be doing the same for them. You would get to see their love and respect and happiness how becoming double in these days. That’s our actual success we feel, even though we keep on looking after their problems and keeping them happy the whole year, but in actual may not be successful. Also we have another rule of making any guest of ours also doing the same, who would be arriving in our state then during the period of those three days. So please do come.”
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