Poem 4 - In The Kingdom Of Fools

“In the Kingdom of Fools” is a Kannada folktale by A.K Ramanujan. The title of the story is satirical as it hints upon the idea that the people in the Kingdom are nothing but fools. Chapter 4 English Class 9 is an exciting tale where we learn how foolishness and greed can affect our lives. We must be intelligent and try to be as quick-witted as possible. To have a better understanding of the chapter, explore the summary below.

Summary:

The story starts with the King and the minister wanting to run their Kingdom differently. They begin by treating night as day and the day as night. This itself hints that the story is going to be humorous and funny. They decided that everyone would work at night and sleep during the day if anyone did not obey the orders, they would be punished. To avoid a death penalty, everyone followed the King’s rules.

One day a guru (saint) and his disciple entered the city. He was surprised to see that it was a beautiful city, yet no one was in sight. They were all sleeping. It was so quiet that not even a mouse stirred. The people taught the cows to sleep as well, so everyone, including the animals, was fast asleep. Both the Guru and the disciple were amazed at this sight. Then, it was evening, and everyone woke up and went to work. Now that everyone was awake, the two strangers went to buy some groceries. They saw that every vegetable no matter what they purchased costs the same. They were astonished, but at the same time, they were excited to get everything so cheap.

After supper, the Guru decided not to stay there anymore as it was indeed a kingdom of fools, and it was unsafe. So he asked his disciple to leave, but his disciple was adamant on not leaving, he insisted on staying there as everything was so cheap. So the Guru left his disciple and went ahead on his own. His disciple stayed and ate to his heart’s content, and soon he became fat.

An incident occurred where a thief tried to steal from a merchant by digging a hole through his wall. When he was about to leave with all the loot, the wall crumbled upon him, and he died. The thief’s brother tried to take advantage of the King’s foolishness and blamed the merchant for not building a strong wall.

The next day, the King summoned him and told him he would be punished, but the merchant cleverly turned the blame on to the builder of the wall. The blame game continued till it came back to the merchant. However, it was not the merchant who died. It was the King and his minister as the Guru had come back to the village to save his disciple and played a trick where the King and the minister were executed.