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Childhood is the best segment of the life by so many aspects. At the same time it is the segment of the life when the moral, ethics, qualities, intelligence and other positives are to be filled in into the kid so he can be a better human in the life coming ahead.
The wise people have found a lot of ways to implant good qualities into the children. As they are not mature enough to digest the heavy philosophy the stuff needs to be represented in rather light manner to them, so they can absorb the same and at the same time can understand importance of the same. Most of the cultures have their “wise tales for the children”. It is the most important wealth of any culture. Same way Indian culture has most probably the biggest collection of such tales. Be it tales from Panchatantra, Hitopadesha, Amar Chitra Katha, KathaSaritSagar, incidents from Ramayana, Mahabharata, Vikram Vetal tales, Jataka Tales, Akbar Birbal tales,… the list can go on and on and on. One of the famous and intersting series in such tales are the Sinhasan Battisi (or Singhasan Battisi). They are the tales associated with King Vikram, who was the face of truth, bravery and most importantly justice, which made him immoral in a sense that he is still remembered for the same.
It was the golden time of Doordarshan, when such a nice quality tales were casted on air. Sinhasan Battisi was also one of them. The first episode of the tale is started in the court of king Bhoj. King Bhoj is considered as one of the best kings, especially in terms of justice he brings amongst his court. There was a case running in the court of King Bhoj. A Brahmin couple claimed that a businessman who used to be friend of the Brahmin have grabbed four valuable gems from them. The case details presented by the Brahmin couple was something like this: The Brahmin have served a king in the nearest kingdom and the overwhelmed king have presented him four precious and valuable gems as gift. The Brahmin needed to stay there for a large amount of time as per the commitment, he decided to send these valuables to his wife in the village. He thought, his friend since long, the businessman, is the best person to courier the things with. As he knew him since very long, he completely trusted him. The wife of the Brahmin, however claimed that she haven’t ever received the gems from the businessman. The businessman in turn have a different story, the gems were couriered by the Brahmin via him, that’s true. But he in fact delivered them all to the wife of the Brahmin. As both parties were telling with confidence and intensity, king got confused to judge the true one.
He then asked if either of the party can produce evidences about the matter. The businessman have four witnesses of the incident and he already brought them to court so he represented them all. They all have confirmed that the businessman is indeed speaking the truth and they were the eye-witness of the event when the businessman handed over the wealthy gems to the wife of the Brahmin. The Brahmin and his wife refused to agree the same and they keep telling that they are speaking the truth only and all the witnesses are framing the wrong alibi for the incident which never occurred. Ultimately king Bhoj declares the judgement in favor of the businessman based on the evidences. Unhappy Brahmin couple got heart-broken and they said that this is not the justice. They came there with the hope of the justice but they didn’t get it. It was better that if they have visited the court of the shepherd instead and they got out from the court.
This incident made Bhoj thinking who is the shepherd boy and how is he giving justice. He asked about the same to his minister and he got to know that there is a shepherd boy living in a village, who is not so intelligent at all. When you talk to him you find him rather dumb-witted. When he sits over a stone at a specific place. His persona got transformed. He speaks with the authority then and he is famous for the justice he is giving. The king got interested in the matter and decided to visit the place.
We will keep discussing what happened there in the next segment. The acting of the cast is rather good. The special effects etc are definitely not up-to-the-mark if you look at now. But, based on the technology and budget available at that time, it can be considered as fair. Overall starting of a nice series which is a must watch for the kids especially, instead of wasting times in fixed live talent shows and melodramatic terrestrials.
Keep reading, keep knowing the Indian culture, keep getting closer to the humanity…
