A monkey and a surahi

This is a story I read when I was a small kid. It goes like this: A man wants to catch a monkey. He places some chickpeas (chana) in a surahi (surahi is a Hindi word for a thin, necked flask, usually to store drinking water), leaves it in a park where monkeys frequently visit and hides behind a nearby tree. In some time, a curious monkey approaches the surahi and inserts his hand inside the neck of the surahi to grab as many chickpeas as his fist can hold. But the monkey's fist is too big to slide out of the neck of the surahi. The man starts running towards the monkey. The monkey sees the man but out of greed does not open his fist to remove his hand and is caught. Interesting story - monkeys are fools, and humans are clever. Clap. Clap. Just that, the story is only a figment of one's imagination and, in reality, monkeys are smarter than this. One would notice that a monkey, while attempting to scavenge food from a waste-bin or while attempting to open a container, would run away at the slightest hint of someone approaching him. In fact, I have seen clever monkeys who manage to steal bread-pakoras from kids but do not approach a heap of bread-pakoras in the nearby shop because they know that the shopkeeper will not let them steal.

Humans are different though. They are the greedy lot. And, they are so greedy that if monkeys could understand their behavior, they would be the ones writing stories about them. If one replaces chickpeas with something that humans care more about, say, a legacy like a house which can be sold to make some money. Humans will put on a nasty show and will fight tooth and nail to get a hold of it or a piece of it. One cannot reason with them, and to even attempt such a thing is naivete. Quite an entertainment for monkeys, I must say.

Arjun

Arjun had a problem. His teacher had declared that he will be the greatest archer in the World. He was just a 6 years old kid, who enjoyed playing with his brothers, lazying around and listening to stories from his mom. How will he bear the burden of becoming the greatest archer in the World? The problem with the word 'greatest' is that it implies becoming better than everyone else. The scale is not absolute but relative. So if a catastrophe strikes and only Arjun survives, he becomes greatest by default. Becoming 'great', on the other hand, does not imply comparison. As long as one works to improve their skill, one can become great. The declaration by Arjun's teacher, Dhronacharya, therefore, not only affected Arjun but every aspiring archer in the World. And we see later its consequences - Eklavya lost his thumb, and Karna was discriminated against - only so that Arjun can be the greatest.

Dhronacharya was a bad teacher. He should have taught his students how to improve their skills, not how to eliminate competition.