Head and Body  

There was once a king called King Chatursen who ruled over Benares. The king and his queen were unhappy because they did not have children. They prayed to the gods desperately and after many years they were blessed with a baby boy. The boy grew up to be a handsome, intelligent, and valorous young man and he was a joy to his father the king, and his mother the queen.

The prince was called Rohit. He had a friend called Amit. Amit was the son of the palace washerman. One day when Rohit visited Amit at his home, Rohit saw a beautiful girl and fell in love with her. She also loved him. He told his friend Amit about his love for the girl. The girl’s name was Sunita. She belonged to the washerman community. The truth was that Amit had loved Sunita. But he had never expressed his love to her neither did she know of his love for her. When he heard that Prince Rohit was in love with her and that she, in turn, loved him, his sense of loyalty helped him to decide to help his friend somehow win the hand of the girl he loved.

For the next few days, Rohit was the picture of misery. He could not sleep or eat and he had that miserable and pained look on his face. He went to the Kali temple and prayed to the deity, “If I am able to marry Sunita, I will offer my head in sacrifice on the next full moon night.”

In the meanwhile, Amit had gone to the king and explained to the worried king, the cause for Rohit’s ill health. The king decided to break all social conventions for the sake of his son’s happiness and got Prince Rohit married to Sunita - the daughter of a common washerman. The couple lived very happily for a few days. During that time Amit went through life with mixed feelings. At one end, he was happy that his friend was happy. But from time to time he could not help feeling sad about his loss.

And then on the next full moon night, Rohit took Sunita and Amit to the Kali temple. Asking them to wait outside, he went in and as promised, beheaded himself with his sword. After a time when Amit went in to check out what had happened, he was shocked to see his friend beheaded. In a state of shock and sorrow, he also took the sword and cut his head off. A while later when Sunita entered the temple, she saw both of them lying dead and ended her own life also. Goddess Kali was moved and she restored all three back to life. But while doing so, she interchanged the head and body of Prince Rohit and Amit.”

Betal stopped his story and once again asked King Vikram a question. “Now that Rohit’s head was on Amit’s body and Amit’s head was on Rohit’s body, who is the rightful husband of Sunita?”

King Vikram answered the true husband is the one with Rohit’s head and Amit’s body because the head rules the body and so is the most important part of a man’s personality, character, and identity.”

Betal was happy with his answer but slipped away once more to the banyan tree since he had failed to maintain silence. King Vikram turned around and pursued Betal to continue with his task.