There was a father and a mother, and their daughter. All three of them were deaf, even the daughter, who had now reached a marriageable age. The father of this deaf family ploughed his fields with a cow.

One day a passerby saw this and said, “What are you doing ploughing with a cow? I’ve got several bullocks idle in my place. Why don’t you take a pair and plough with them?” But the man was deaf, so what he heard was: “Why don’t you plough my field, too?” “Your field!” he said. “Let my wife come and we’ll see about that.”

Soon his wife came with his midday meal and he told her what the man said. “Did you ever hear of such a thing!” he cried. “Some guy ordered me to plough his field! Such insolence!” But his wife was also deaf, remember, so she didn’t hear exactly what he said. What she heard was: “Why did you and that daughter of yours eat all the beans? Why didn’t you bring me any for lunch?”

The words of the passerby about helping the man with his ploughing had now become an argument about who ate the beans! In reply, his wife said, “Get lost! Come home and ask her if we ate it; then you’ll see who’s right!”

So the husband and wife went home and stood in front of their daughter. The mother spoke first: “Your father’s saying that we ate all the food and gave him nothing. What do you say to that?” And the daughter answered, “If you two have decided it is really best for me to get married, then, alright, I won’t object any longer.”

A folk story from Tamil Nadu sourced from the book Folk tales from Tamil Nadu that were collected in Panaiyakkottai, Thanjavur District .

Click here to submit your Folklore.