If I tell the truth, father will kill mother; if I say nothing, he will eat dog’s flesh.” This is a common saying in Malayalam to indicate a very difficult dilemma. The story of the origin of this saying goes as follows.

Ramu was a very ill-tempered sort of man, and usually came home drunk. His wife found her married life anything but a bed of roses. One afternoon, Ramu brought home some mutton and asked his wife to make a nice curry of it for his evening meal. He then went out, and the woman went to the kitchen to bring a plate and a knife, leaving the piece of meat on the verandah.

When she returned, she saw that a dog had just finished eating the meat. She was terribly upset and afraid. She took a stone and threw it at the dog, hitting it on the head. The animal fell dead.

She had an idea. She cut the dog to pieces, washed the meat, and made a nice curry of it. When her husband came home, she set it before him, with rice. Their little daughter was a witness to all this. She said, “If I tell the truth, father will kill mother; if I say nothing, he will eat dog’s flesh.”

Ramu was intrigued by the child’s words. “What does she mean?” he asked his wife. The poor woman, trembling, told him the truth. Ramu, however, was in a good mood. He enjoyed the humour of the situation and did not punish his wife. But he turned the incident to his advantage later on and used it to taunt his wife for attempting to make him eat dog’s meat.

A folktale sourced from Folktales of Kerala by K. Jacob
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