Week 6, Storytelling, I am not buying what you are selling chump!, Portfolio

The Mongoose image found www.quickanddirtytips.com

I am not buying what you are selling, chump!

Manny the Mongoose lives in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn. It's a beautiful and historical area of New York. He has lived there his whole life, and his father before him and his father's father and so on. They have all served in the Temple since they first arrived in the "New World" or New York centuries ago. It is an important function and honor to have a Mongoose serve in the Temple. It has always been so since the reign of King Yudhishthira in the Temple in the "Old World" of India. 

Image found on Yelp.com

Manny, not unlike his ancestors before him, is well respected on the streets for his wisdom. He carries a keen sense of what is valuable and what is not. He can empathetically feel when someone is sincere and when they are not. It's kinda like a built-in lie detector. It's a great talent to have while working in the Temple. 

However, to most people Manny the Mongoose sounds a bit like a snarky alley rat with a thick Brooklyn accent. He is not a guy who holds back when he has something to say. He can be pretty hard to ignore.

And so it so happens to be one lovely April afternoon in the tiny Bay Ridge Temple. A gaunt, dirty young woman walks into the temple. She is so pale and so thin! Manny could tell right away this is not the type of thinness induced by vanity's sake like some of the people you'd see in the city. 

The lovely lotus-like lady has brought offerings of food and flowers to the deities. And yet it is plain to see the girl does not really have it to give. She herself is close to fainting from lack of nutrition. 

She must have some story, Manny thinks to himself. He puts one hand on his hip and shifts his weight to the wall he is leaning on in the corner where no one notices him.

Many of the other people who have come to offer praise and offerings do notice the frail young woman so seemingly out of place. But only one among them will do anything about it.

"Hey lady, you okay?" asks the little boy. He had just walked into the Temple with his family.

"Yes, thank you for asking, that is very kind of you," says the stranger. She smiles at the boy and then passes out. 

Manny the Mongoose is now on high alert! His tail is all puffed out! He puts his tiny furry hands on his face and mutters, "Oy Vey! What's with this! Somebody shoot me already!"

"Mah, did yous see dat?" exclaims the little boy to his mother. The boy quickly runs over to the lady on the floor to offer her his assistance.

Meanwhile, the other people are doing nothing to offer assistance to the struggling woman or to help the young boy who wants to help her.

Manny is scanning the room of sacred space, looking at the lights emanating from the  hearts of the congregation. They are all wealthy professional people who have come to offer food and gifts to the deities. Yet they all shrink away from the mess of a person before them.

In apathy they will do nothing but what they came to the Temple to do. Manny the Mongoose is smelling the guilt and shame in the room like putrid flesh rotting. It is making his tiny black nose twitch and his usually calm temper rise.

The heart of the young boy who desperately wants to help sparkles in golden amber light, not like the dull yellow of the greedy ones. He acts from kindness in his heart. His wealthy father had lost his job a few weeks ago. His family has been struggling to pay for things yet, the food that they brought as an offering they offer to the young woman to revive her strength. 

Many people in the room are astonished and are judging the boy harshly for this. This too lets out a stink that Manny the Mongoose feels is foul indeed. "That's it! Enough! I am not buying what you are selling, chump!" the mongoose shouts with his loudest roar he can muster.

Manny the Mongoose leaps up on the lectern in the corner of the Temple and he begins to tell the worshippers a thing or two. He quotes to the audience: "Ye kings, this great sacrifice is not equal to a little measure of powdered barley given away by a liberal brahmin of Kurukshetra, who was observing the unccha vow." Then he launches into the tale of  the Brahmin and his family. The audience just stands there with their mouths hanging open riveted in place.

While the audience is in reality shock because a mongoose is speaking English in a thick Brooklyn accent, rehearsing the story from the Mahabharata, they nearly miss the other miraculous happening in the room. The emaciated woman eats the meager meal that the young boy offers and then she is transformed into Lakshmi, the goddess of luck and wealth. She is so thankful for the generous offering that she blesses the young boy and his mother with a gift of prosperity and abundance.

Lakshmi, image found www.eprarthana.com

Author's Note and Bibliography: 

I wrote this story after reading the original story, The Mongoose, found in The Story of the Great War by Annie Besant (1899) found in Mahabharata Online: Public Domain Edition. This was my favorite story I read this week. It reminded me of a similar story in the Bible about strangers/guests and ironically being in the company of  angels. (Hebrews 13:2 Aramaic Bible in Plain English) "And do not forget kindness to strangers, for by this, some who, while they were unaware, were worthy to receive Angels."

In the original story, The Mongoose, the brahmin had his entire family starving in famine and they sacrifice their last morsels of food to a stranger. The stranger turns into the God Dharma who blesses them with food and abundance. The  "unchha vow" (Sanskrit unchha vrtti) which means living upon grains picked up from fields after the crops have been harvested.

The reign of King Yudhishthira in the Temple in the "Old World" of India is a reference also to the original story where the mongoose is half golden and says the same quote he says in this story. The king makes a huge offering of wealth that does not measure up to the sacrifice as the meager morsel of food that the starving brahmin offers.

I love that the cute little mongoose is the narrator! I usually do not like stories with the whole animal themes, but this story is cute. Almost as cute as the image of the mongoose. He has such a smug look on his tiny furry face. I can picture him telling such a great tale, with his own reasons for pointing out how the kings should be giving away more of their abundance. 

word count; 864 note;286