Chapter 4: "In the Kingdom of Fools"
Summary: "In the Kingdom of Fools" is a Kannada folktale retold by A.K. Ramanujan. The story is set in a kingdom where both the king and his ministers are foolish and make absurd rules. One such rule is that everyone in the kingdom must work during the night and sleep during the day. The people of the kingdom, fearing punishment, follow this strange rule.
One day, a guru and his disciple arrive in the kingdom. They are surprised to find everything upside down, with people sleeping during the day and working at night. The guru realizes that it is a kingdom of fools and advises his disciple to leave immediately. However, the disciple, tempted by the cheap food available in the kingdom, decides to stay behind.
Soon, the disciple finds himself in trouble when he is wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit. The foolish king orders that the disciple be executed. The guru, using his wisdom, devises a plan to save his disciple. He convinces the king that the person to be executed is too thin and that a fatter person, like the king himself, should be executed instead.
The king, being foolish, falls into the trap and orders his own execution. The guru and his disciple are then made the new king and minister of the kingdom. The guru, however, decides to change all the foolish rules and bring back normalcy to the kingdom.
The story is a humorous yet insightful tale that teaches the importance of wisdom and intelligence over foolishness and ignorance.
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