Translation: Father, Tiger is here! (From Pedda Bala Shiksha by Gajula Satyanarayana)

In a small village called Munipally, there lived a rich farmer named Somaiya. He owned a farmland and a flock of sheep. One day, he took his sheep, along with his son Ranganna and other laborers to his farm. He asked his son to look after sheep while they were grazing. Ranganna agreed. “Sometimes, a big tiger comes this way. Be careful. If you see it, shout for us immediately”, Somaiya cautions his son and goes along with other laborers to work on the farm. Ranganna is a naughty boy. He thought of playing a prank on his father. A while after, “Father, Father, Tiger is here!” he shouted. Thinking that the tiger had arrived, Somaiya took a stick in his hand and ran with other laborers towards his son. When they reached there, Ranganna laughed and said, “There is no tiger here, I shouted to prank you!”. Laborers went back to work. After a while, he again shouted, “Father, Father, Tiger is here”. Somaiya and others again ran to him. “Again, I pranked you”, said Ranganna. After a while, the tiger has really arrived. This time, Ranganna again shouted, “Father, Father, Tiger”. Somaiya chooses to ignore his son. He thought Ranganna was shouting to prank them again. Tiger came and grabbed away a lamb holding by its neck. Ranganna realised, weeping, that if you lie casually for pranking, adversity will surely land upon you. On that day, he realised never to lie again. 

Moral: Don’t lie even to prank others.

Postscript:

This is a very famous short story that my grandfather told me often. I have also come across this story in my school textbooks and many story books, including Pedda Bala Shiksha (that is the basis for this translation). But I always read this story in Telugu and thought this was only available in Telugu. So, I decided to translate it. When I shared this story with some of my friends from various states in India, surprisingly, they found this story reminiscing. They told me they also heard this story multiple times at home and in their classrooms. A friend from Delhi shared a fable called “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf”. Upon googling this story, I found a similar story in ‘Aesopica’, a collection of fables by Greek fabulist Aesop under the title “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’“. One friend from Karnataka told me that he listened to this story from his father in Kannada and Telugu and in school in Kannada and English. Another friend from West Bengal told me that this was her ‘grandpa’s story’, and he often told this story to her. It is interesting to see how the stories travel, translated and re-told in various languages, their origins unknown and contestable, that pass on from one generation to another, regionalised (especially names of the characters, and also predator) and still carrying the ability to convey the same morals.