A Grain of Rice - Power of Girl Math

Experimenting with a new Gemini image feature when this story came to mind. The words are mine, the images are AI-generated, and the original story was passed down by someone’s very wise grandma.

Long ago, there was a King who was a bit of a narcissist. In his mind, he believed himself to be the greatest ruler in the universe who was governing people "beautifully". The fact is, the king was greedy and unkind. Anyone who disagreed with him would face his wrath, so no one around him dared to speak the truth. Once famine struck in his kingdom and everyone began to worry about the future, so did the king...mainly about himself and his wealthy friends. He wanted to store extra food for himself in case the farm grew nothing. The king issued an order: he commanded the collection of extra rice sacks from the farmers to hoard in the royal granary. He gave convincing and impressive explanations, suggesting it was in everyone's best interest. However, it was impossible for villagers to meet his demands. As a result, starvation and poverty began to spread. But the king hardly cared.

In that village lived a clever little girl named Leela. She was watching all this curiously. Feeling sad for her parents and other villagers.

Suddenly she noticed one of the sacks was having hole at the bottom and rice was falling grain by grain. So she started collecting those grains and followed the carts all the way to the palace. Instead of keeping rice for herself, she decided to give it back to the king.

King was surprised. "Is this an act of foolishness or loyalty?" he wondered.

Yet he was happy to see all the harvest safe at his palace. He praised Leela for her "loyalty" and urged everyone in the court to follow her example.

"Since you have been so 'loyal' to your King," the narcissist ruler's voice echoed through the court hall, "I shall grant you a reward. Ask for anything! Gold, jewels, or a new house for your family, what do you want?"

Leela bowed respectfully, her eyes sparkled, "My King," she said softly, "How about you give me just one grain of rice today. Then, for each day of the next month, give me double of the amount of rice you gave me the day before."

The king laughed, he granted Leela's request. He thought Leela was naive and she had missed the chance to ask for something big that could have helped her and her family. He gave her a grain of rice.

Next day Leela came and took two grains, then four, eight, sixteen...by the end of the 10th day she had 512 grains. For the first few days King smiled. Few grains of rice were nothing to him. But by the twentieth day, he stopped smiling.

Hundreds of sacks were being taken out of his palace! By the end of the month, Leela had collected 536,870,912 grains. Almost all of the rice from the king, she claimed back. Seeing her cleverness, all the villagers were overjoyed and proud, and they felt grateful to her. Leela had saved the village.

The king, bound by his word, had no choice but to fulfill her humble request. When he visited his royal granary at the end of one month, it was completely empty. This was the power of Girl Math 😀. The king realized his mistake and felt proud to see an intelligent girl outsmart his ego. From that day on, the whole village lived happily, and the king never underestimated them again.

Always keep right attitude and good education...and you will not regret.

Moral of the story - "गर्वाचे घर खाली"!