The Queen Who Was Angry

King Krishnadevaraya loved writing poetry and plays. One evening he read his newest play aloud to Queen Tirumala Devi. It was a long play. It was a very long play. And somewhere around the fourth act, the queen yawned.

The king stopped reading. “You yawned! You are bored by my play!”

“No, my lord, I was only tired—”

But the king was offended. He gathered up his pages and stormed out of the room. The queen was hurt in her turn, and so the king and queen stopped speaking to each other. Days went by. Then weeks. The whole palace was gloomy.

At last the queen sent for Tenali Raman and told him what had happened. “Please,” she said, “find a way to make peace between us.”

The next day Tenali came to court with a small cloth bag. He bowed to the king and said, “Your Majesty, I have brought you a wonderful gift from a holy man in the hills. These are magic rice seeds. If they are planted, they will grow into rice plants with grains of pure gold. The whole kingdom will be rich forever.”

The king sat up. “Golden rice! Plant them at once!”

“There is just one condition, Your Majesty,” said Tenali. “The holy man warned me that these seeds will only grow if they are planted by someone who has never yawned in his whole life. If they are planted by someone who has ever yawned, even once, they will rot in the ground.”

The king frowned. “Never yawned? But that is impossible. Everybody yawns. I yawn myself, every evening. People yawn when they’re tired, or sleepy, or—”

He stopped. He looked at Tenali. Tenali looked back at him innocently.

“Everybody yawns,” said the king slowly. “Even when they are not bored at all.”

“Even queens, Your Majesty,” said Tenali softly. “Especially queens who stay up late listening to very long plays.”

The king was silent for a moment. Then he laughed, a little sheepishly, and stood up. “Tenali, you are impossible. Keep your seeds.”

He went straight to the queen’s rooms and apologised. The queen forgave him at once, and that evening, to celebrate, he read her one short poem, and nobody yawned at all.

As for the magic seeds, they were ordinary rice. Tenali planted them in his own garden, and they grew into ordinary rice plants, which was quite good enough for him.