Frog from the Well

Kupastu Mandukaha

an Ancient Sanskrit Story

Adapted into English by Ray N.

In an abandoned well outside a village, there lived a big bull frog. He was a good frog, but all he knew was the well and nothing else. Having grown up in the well, he knew the stones it was made of, the plants that grew out of its cracks, and generations of spiders which kept weaving webs like there was nothing else to life except weaving webs. And the frog was happy as can be in his limited knowledge.

One day there was a huge storm. It blew in a lot of leaves and a few branches into the well. It also brought another frog.

The frog from the well approached the new frog and said, “hey, who are you?”

“I’m the frog from the river,” said the other frog. “The storm brought me here.”

“A river? You mean to tell me there’s a world outside this well?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it,” said the frog from the well.

“OK, you know this well really well, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” said the frog from the well, proudly.

“And you don’t know me, right?”

“No, I don’t.”

“If you know your well and I’m not from there, I’m from somewhere else, right? Which means there are places in the world other than this well. And I come from one of those places, and it’s called a river,” said the frog from the river, hoping that this should do it.

“You can quibble all you want,” said the frog from the well, “but there’s no place other than this well, and that’s that.” Then he moved deeper into the well.

Even the spiders thought it was funny how closed-minded the frog from the well was.

But the frog from the river would not give up. “Look, I have no way of getting back to the river. This is my new home now. You, the spiders and me all have to share this well. We might as well become friends and learn from one another. I’ll start by telling you about the river, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets you could see reflected in it, and these flying creatures called geese.”

Then spiders started wiggling closer to the frog from the river. They said, “tell us about the sunrises and sunsets.”

“Forget the sunrises,” said the booming voice of the frog from the well. “I want to hear about those geese first.” He hopped right next to the frog from the river and gave the other frog a high five.

(July 1999)