Again, I wanted to add folk tales from cultures that had not been represented yet in this growing collection. Thus, I searched on YouTube for Indian folktales and found another short children’s cartoon from Geethanjali Kids as part of their Rhymes and Stories series. They aim to help keep Indian culture alive by presenting various folk tales to children in an entertaining manner. The folk tale I found for this collection is called “Mind Your Business.”

The “Mind Your Business” story features a washer man who had a pet donkey and dog. Each had a job for the man, as the dog was a guard and the donkey carried his “stack of clothes to the river and brought it back.” The two animals slept outside but had different views of their relationship with the man. The dog “was proud of his duties and boasted a lot.” One night, he teased the donkey about how he does not have to work as hard as the donkey. The dog calls him a “beast of burden,” insulting the donkey who did not respond. A few nights later, a thief robbed the man’s house. The dog saw the thief but did not bark, which was a violation of his own duty. Instead, the donkey saw the thief and questioned the dog’s inaction. The dog said, “mind your own business, don’t talk to me about my duties.” The dog explains how he is upset with his master because he feels he is not treated well enough. So, he lets the thief in, and the donkey protests, saying “you fool, this is not a time to complain, this is a time for action!” So, the donkey made the noise and chased the thief away. The man thought the donkey was making noise for no reason and he beat the donkey. The tale ends with “it is always better to mind your own business.”

The story also begins with “once upon a time,” which may be a strategy to connect the folk tale with an English-speaking audience. As stated in the last entry, most folk tales begin with some version of this, even though some of them come from very different cultures. I am assuming that in the English translation of the tales, narrators choose to use some version of this opening because it reinforces to the viewer that this is a folk tale. It helps with the introduction and setting certain expectations within the reader, as there will be a situation, resolution, and clear moral lesson within that resolution. However, the lesson comes in a much darker format compared to other animal fables, as there is no consequence for the man beating the donkey. I was expecting the donkey to be rewarded for his service, but the tale took a very unexpected end with the presence of animal abuse.

Source: Geethanjali Kids. “Mind Your Business.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9CsiPMBsCU

The second animal folklore I wanted to add to this collection comes from the classic Aesop’s Fables, once again as performed by my mother over a phone call when I had asked her to reread portions of some of my favorite animal folklore from when I was a child. Along with Kipling’s classic, I remember I loved when she would read stories from Aesop’s Fables to me as well. There are many versions of these fables, as they go back to Greek and Roman traditions. The story my mother chose from these collections is one of her own personal favorites, “The Ass in the Lion’s Skin.”

The story is essentially about a very vain donkey that dawns on the skin of a lion he finds that was left by a hunter. He puts the skin on and begins to terrify the local animals, who think he is really a lion. It is only the clever fox that eventually discovers that he is not a lion after the donkey, absolutely pleased with himself, neighs in his donkey voice. At that moment, the fox realizes he is not a lion, telling him “if you had kept your mouth shut you might have frightened me too! But you gave yourself away with that silly bray!” The underlying moral of this fable is that you may be able to deceive some with false looks created through one’s appearance and clothing, but it will always come out who you really are.

Since this is my mother’s favorite of the whole collection, she was very excited to read it. It was short, but her excitement made it even shorter. She was rushed to get to the part about the fox, because she really appreciates the fox character in all of Aesop’s Fables. He is sly, clever, and cunning—able to outsmart much more powerful opponents with his intelligence. However, in this story, my mother appreciates the fact that he serves as a bit of comic relief. The situational irony exposes the donkey’s secret to the reader earlier on, and it is nice to see the donkey’s farce revealed. My mother always gives a very sarcastic and cool tone to the dialogue of the fox, as she tries to impart these characteristics with the underlying nature of this character. I think this is why she really likes this tale above all else, because the reader can see the true sarcastic nature of the fox that does compliment is wittiness developed in the other fables.

For this collection, I wanted to also add in some of my own favorite folktales that were read to me as a child. The first is a story written by Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories, a collection of folktales meant to be read aloud by parents to their children. My favorite of these stories, “The Cat That Walked by Himself” is a folktale describing the reason cats have never been truly domesticated like other animals, including dogs and horses. The story opens describing the early age of man, before humanity had domesticated animals. It then describes the process of domesticating animals like the dog, cow, and horse. The man’s wife tried to domesticate the cat, but the cat refused, claiming “I am not a friend, and I am not a servant. I am the cat who walks by himself.” He wants the benefits of free food and shelter but refuses to live under the domination of the woman and the man. Instead, he attacks their young child and is driven out by the man and the other animals, who vow to hate him and chase him always. It is meant to explain the solitary nature of cats and how they often do not get along with other animals or their human masters.

As the author of major children’s stories like The Jungle Book, Kipling has a very animated style of writing that really is expressed when read aloud. He starts the story with “hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O best beloved.” The phrases were very nostalgic. In fact, my mother had adopted that as my childhood nickname—Best Beloved. I had my mother read a part of the story to me over the phone and it felt like I was transported back into my childhood. Although I could not see her facial expressions or hand gestures, she had read the story to me so many times I could still picture them vividly in my head. Moreover, her enunciations of the words were spot on with my memory, which helped me better with the visualization of the performance she was expressing on the other end of the phone line.