Keep It for the Beggar

The 1890 collection introduces the tale through a South Indian household scene: after supper, children say, “Amma, this pudding is so good. Keep some for the morning.”

And their mother answers straight away, “Ask me to keep it for the beggar, and I will.”

“Why can’t we say ‘keep it for the morning,’ Amma?” the children ask. Then the mother tells them this story.

In a certain village there lived a husband and wife who were very fond of each other. Every day the husband went out to look after his fields and his garden, and he came home with plenty of vegetables. His wife cooked them and gave him as much as he could eat. In the mornings, before he went out to work, he would eat whatever was left over from the night before, cold, for his breakfast.

More than anything, the husband loved dhal, a soup made of lentils. Every night his wife made a big pot of it and set a good portion aside for his breakfast, to eat with cold rice. She never once forgot. But every night, all the same, the husband reminded her. “Keep me some of this soup for tomorrow morning,” he would say.

“Yes, my dear, I will,” she would answer.

Year after year it went on like this. Every night there was dhal for supper, every night a good portion was saved, and every night, without missing a single one, the husband said, “Keep some for the morning.”

One night the husband finished his supper, and his wife sat down to eat after him, as she did in this household. And as usual he said, “Keep some of this soup for the morning, my dear.”

At once a bubbling laugh rang out near the doorway. The husband and wife were astonished. They searched the whole house, but there was nobody there. So the husband said it a second time: “Keep some of this soup for the morning, my dear.”

The laugh came a second time. Since the laugh came straight after his words, he said them a third time, and a third time the laugh rang out. Three times they had heard laughing in their own house, and still they could see no one! The husband thought one of the neighbours must be making fun of him, so he went round asking, but he soon found that none of them had laughed at him. He was frightened, for he had heard the laughter clearly, three times, from inside his own home.

That very night something terrible and unexpected happened. As the husband was pulling back the latch of the back door, a snake bit him on the finger. When the neighbours heard there was a snake in the house next door, they came running with a heavy stick. But they were too late. The man who loved dhal so much had fallen down and died. His wife sat weeping beside him. “My dear husband,” she cried, “how could you forget your soup so soon and leave us? You told me to keep it for you only a little while ago, and now you are gone without even tasting it.”

The neighbours searched for the snake, but they could not find it. Then a voice spoke out of the empty air.

“This man’s life was to end at the twelfth ghatika of the night,” said the voice. “Yama, the god of death, sent me to fetch him. I reached this house at the eighth ghatika, just as he was telling his wife to save his soup for the morning, and I could not stop myself laughing. I am a spirit, so no one could see me, and that is why nobody found me after the laughing. Then I turned myself into a snake and waited for the hour when I had to do my work. A little while ago he was sure he would eat his cold rice tomorrow morning. How sure people are of themselves, in a world where nothing is sure! That is why I laughed.”

When the messenger had said this, he vanished, to tell his master that the task was done.

“And so, my children,” says the mother, “ever since then, people have known that no one can be sure of what will happen next. So how can you say, ‘Keep the pudding for tomorrow morning’? Say ‘Keep it for the beggar’ instead. Then, if we are lucky enough to be here tomorrow, we can eat some of it and give the rest to someone who is hungry. So whenever food is saved overnight, always say, ‘Keep it for the beggar, Amma.’”

“Yes, Mother,” say the children. “We will.”

About this tale

This tale comes from Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India (1890), by Pandit S. M. Natesa Sastri and Mrs. Howard Kingscote. The collection presents it as an explanation of a family saying: instead of asking for leftovers to be kept “for the morning,” children were taught to say “keep it for the beggar.” That way nobody boasted about tomorrow, and any food that was left would still be shared.

In the original, the spirit counts time in ghatikas, an old Indian unit of time of about twenty-four minutes. Yama is a Hindu deity associated with death; the messenger’s appointed visit belongs to the tale’s religious account of mortality.

Read the original: Natesa Sastri and Mrs. Howard Kingscote, Tales of the Sun (Project Gutenberg #37002)

Reading guidance: For ages 9–12 with an adult. A husband dies suddenly from a supernatural messenger’s snakebite; discussion should make clear that ordinary plans or words do not cause a loved one’s death.

A closer reading

The repeated request for breakfast makes the husband’s ordinary expectation feel secure; the unseen laugh interrupts that habit before its meaning is revealed. The messenger knows something the household cannot know. Its laughter creates dramatic irony rather than proving that the husband did anything wrong by planning a meal.

The mother’s revised phrase redirects attention toward a hungry person beyond the household. But the food is still kept overnight, and the family may still eat part of it. The contrast is therefore between an exclusive expectation and a willingness to share, not between prudent saving and wicked hoarding. The story need not make a child afraid that speaking about tomorrow causes a death.

Try this with the story

Compare the two requests word by word: ‘keep it for the morning’ and ‘keep it for the beggar.’ Identify what stays the same—the food is saved—and what changes—the person imagined as its recipient. Write a modern sharing plan that also allows the family to prepare for breakfast.

Questions to ask

• Why did the invisible messenger laugh when the husband asked for his soup to be saved?
• What does the mother want her children to learn from the story?
• Why might it be kinder to say ‘keep it for the beggar’ than ‘keep it for the morning’?

You may also like

• The Beggar And The Five Muffins — another tale from Tales of the Sun about a couple and their food
• Good Luck To The Lucky One Or Shall I Fall Down — another Tales of the Sun story about fate and fortune
• The Poisoned Food — another Tales of the Sun tale with a lesson about what happens to the food we give