More Blind Than Seeing

“Birbal,” said the Emperor one day, “in my city, which are there more of: people who can see, or people who are blind?”

“People who are blind, Your Majesty,” said Birbal at once.

Akbar laughed. “Nonsense. I see hundreds of people in the streets every day, and nearly all of them can see perfectly well.”

“Give me a day, Your Majesty, and I will prove it.”

The next morning Birbal set himself up in the busiest corner of the market. He sat on a low stool with a wooden frame and a coil of rope, and he began to weave the rope across the frame to make a charpai, a simple bed. Beside him sat two scribes with paper and ink.

Before long a shopkeeper stopped. “Birbal, what are you doing?”

Birbal went on weaving. To one scribe he whispered, “Write his name down on the blind list.”

Then a soldier came by. “What’s this you’re making, Birbal?”

“Blind list,” whispered Birbal.

A rich merchant, a potter, a priest, a schoolmaster: one after another they stopped, watched Birbal weaving a bed with their own eyes, and asked him what he was doing. And one after another their names went onto the blind list, which grew longer and longer.

Only now and then did someone say, “What a fine bed you’re weaving, Birbal,” and those few names went onto the other list.

Late in the afternoon the Emperor himself came riding through the market, curious to see what Birbal was up to. He stopped his horse and looked down.

“Birbal, what are you doing?”

Birbal bowed, and whispered to the scribe, who very nervously wrote down one more name on the blind list.

That evening Birbal presented his two lists at court. The list of people who could see had eleven names on it. The list of the blind went on for page after page. At the very bottom of it was written: His Majesty the Emperor.

Akbar read his own name and laughed until he had to hold his sides. “I asked what you were doing, while you were doing it right in front of me. Very well, Birbal. Most of us have eyes, but we don’t use them.”