The magic pot

Once upon a time there lived in a village a farmer named Gopi. He had only a small piece of land.

One hot afternoon, the poor farmer was digging his field. All of a sudden, his spade hit something hard. He continued to dig some more. “A big metal pot!” Gopi mumbled.  The pot was big enough for boiling rice for more than hundred people.

But then Gopi thought, “It does not seem to be of any use to me.” He continued digging deeper, hoping to find something else more useful.

After he had dug for a long time, Gopi got tired. “It is of no use. There is nothing else in this field,” he said to himself. He threw the spade into the big metal pot in frustration. Then he sat under a mango tree to rest.

After a while, when he got up to leave, he could not believe his eyes. There were now a hundred spades in the pot. “This is a magical pot!” Gopi exclaimed. He wondered what else the pot could do.

Gopi, getting very excited, picked a mango fruit and put it inside the pot. He eagerly waited what would happen. To his astonishment, the one fruit multiplied into hundred mangoes in the pot. With much effort, Gopi carried the pot to his home and kept it in a secret place so that no one would know about it.

He put many things in the pot and everything multiplied hundredfold. He soon became a rich man. The people noticed Gopi’s good fortune and eventually learned about the pot.

The King came to know of Gopi’s pot and where it was kept. He was a greedy King and was curious to know about the magic pot.  He ordered his men, “You go and find out the secret of that magic pot. If it is valuable, confiscate it and put it in the King’s treasury.” At once, the men went out.

The men returned to the King’s chamber with the magic pot. But the King did not know what to do with it. He thought, “Let me see what is there inside this pot that makes it so magical.” He peered inside. Accidentally, he slipped and fell into the pot.

The King struggled to climb out of the magic pot, only to find that there were now a hundred other Kings inside. All the Kings then started to outdo one another to take hold of the throne. They fought among themselves and, in the end, they all died.

The magic pot lay in the King’s treasury. The greedy King took away the magic pot, which only brought him death. Gopi, knowing what happened to the greedy King, didn’t want the magic pot back.  He let it remain in the King’s treasury. (www.english-for-students.com)