A Kashmiri Folktale
There was a King who had a dream one night – a strange dream.
He saw that there were three things lying in front of him — a watermelon, a knife and a plate. An invisible hand operated the knife, cutting slices of the melon which fell into the plate one after another but the melon remained whole. The knife kept slicing, the pieces of melon kept falling on the plate and yet the plate stayed unfilled.
The King was very shaken by such a strange dream. The next morning he called his minister and narrated the dream. The minister too did not know the meaning of the dream.
So the king ordered the minister to go in search of somebody who could give a satisfactory meaning of the dream.
The minister disguised himself as an ordinary citizen of the kingdom and set out on a mission, meeting people, narrating the dream, seeking a solution.
After six months, he reached a village where he saw a young maiden drawing water from the village well. The minister was very thirsty. He approached the girl and requested her to give him some water from the well to drink. The girl drew a bucketful of water but instead of giving some water to him, she spilled it on the ground. Repeatedly she drew water and threw it on the ground. After about five or six minutes, she gave him water.
After drinking water the minister asked her—”Why didn’t you give me water as soon as I asked for it? I was so thirsty. Why did you drop it on the ground? Were you knowingly mocking me?”
“No such thing, sir,” replied the girl, “You came here after such a long journey. Because of the scorching sun, your body was hot. If I had given you water immediately on your arrival, it would’ve made you ill. That’s why I delayed deliberately and made you wait for it while your body cooled down a bit.”
The minister was pleased with the girl’s reply — and remained quiet for a while. Then he asked her, “What’s your name?”
“Saraswati,” she replied.
The minister said, “Actually I have been walking since morning and now I feel very exhausted.”
The girl, Saraswati, said, “Come with me to my house and take some rest there” She then took the minister to her house.
The minister did not find anyone there and asked, “Where are your parents?”
Saraswati replied. “My mother has gone to take earth out of earth. And my father has gone to put earth into earth.”
The minister was perplexed to hear these replies and wondered what they could mean. He asked her to explain the meaning of her replies.
She said, “Mother has gone to the house where a woman is about to deliver a baby. And father has gone to join the burial rites of a man who died last night.”
The minister was greatly impressed. He thought perhaps Saraswati would be able to solve the riddle of the King’s dream. He opened up before her and narrated to her the dream of the melon and the knife and the plate.
Hearing this, the girl gave a big laugh and said, “I’ll give a solution to this – but directly to the King in his court.”
The minister took the girl with him and arrived in the King’s court. Reaching there, the minister addressed the King and said, “Sir, this girl here is Saraswati and she will give you the meaning of your dream.”
So Saraswati began, “O King, the melon of your dream is this Creation or the life force that manifests in different forms. And the knife is death that is all the time cutting life short and the plate is this world.”
After a brief pause she continued, “While the knife represents death, it also makes way for new creation on earth. The pieces of melon that you saw falling on the plate are new life forms that fill the earth but never so much that the earth is full.”
And then she said, “O King! You, me and everyone else in this world are nothing but pieces of melon on the plate of our Creator. He creates his own offering on his own plate. Everything is his and everything is his doing. But we forget and live our entire life with this forgetfulness. Only sometimes in our dreams does the truth re-emerge. The truth that we are mere parts of the Whole. Even a king is nothing but a part of that Whole.”