The Beggar and the Five Muffins

In a certain village there lived a poor beggar and his wife. Every morning the man went out with a clean bowl in his hand and came home with enough rice for the day’s meal, and so they lived on, very poor indeed.

One day a kind Brahmin invited the couple to a feast. At this feast there were tosai, called ‘muffins’ in the old English telling, and the beggar and his wife ate as many as they could hold. They loved them so much that the wife longed to make some in her own house. Every day she saved a little of the rice her husband brought home, and when she had enough, she asked a neighbour for a little black pulse, the small dark lentils that go into the batter. The neighbour gladly gave it. How happy the beggar and his wife were that day! At last they were going to taste muffins again.

The wife ground the rice and the pulse into a paste and mixed it with a little salt, green chillies, coriander seed and curds. Then she set her pan on the fire, and with her mouth watering the whole time, she cooked five muffins. She was just lifting the fifth one out of the pan when her husband came home.

She set all five muffins in front of him, and his mouth began to water too. He put two in front of himself and two in front of his wife. But what about the fifth? He could not think what to do. It never occurred to him that each of them could have two and a half. Tear one of their precious muffins in half? Never! One of them would have to have it. But which?

“I know,” said the husband. “Let’s both shut our eyes and lie down as if we were asleep, one of us on the veranda on each side of the kitchen. Whoever opens an eye and speaks first gets only two muffins. The other one gets three.”

Each of them wanted those three muffins so badly that they both agreed. The wife’s mouth was watering, but she made up her mind to see it through. She put the five muffins in a pan and covered them with another pan. She bolted the door from the inside and sent her husband to the east veranda, and she lay down on the west one. She did not sleep a wink. With her eyes shut tight, she listened for her husband, because if he spoke first, three muffins would be hers. He kept just as careful a watch on her.

One day passed. Then two. Then three. The house stayed shut. The beggar did not come round for his morning rice. The whole village began to ask questions. Where was the beggar? Where was his wife?

“Go and see whether the house is locked from outside,” said the old men. “Perhaps they have left us for some other village.”

The village watchman went and pushed at the door, but it would not move. “It’s locked from the inside!” people said. “Something terrible must have happened. Perhaps thieves broke in, robbed them, and killed them!”

“But what would a beggar have worth stealing?” said the village council. They did not waste any more time wondering. They sent two watchmen to climb onto the roof and open the latch from the inside, while everyone in the village, men, women and children, crowded outside the house.

The watchmen jumped down into the house and found the beggar and his wife lying on opposite verandas, as still as stone. They opened the door, and the whole village rushed in. Everyone saw the couple lying so still that they were sure the two were dead. The beggar and his wife heard every word, but neither of them opened an eye or said a thing. Whoever did that first would get only two muffins!

So the village paid for two stretchers of green bamboo and coconut leaves, and the couple were carried out to the burning ground, where the dead are cremated. “How they must have loved each other,” said some of the old men, “to die together like this!”

The watchmen collected dried cow-dung cakes and a bundle of firewood from every house, and two funeral pyres were built, one for the man and one for the woman. The fire was lit. When the heat came close to the beggar’s leg, he decided it was time to give up and be satisfied with two muffins. Suddenly, while the villagers were still saying their prayers, a voice called out:

“I’ll be happy with two muffins!”

And straight away another voice answered from the woman’s pyre: “I’ve won! Let me have the three!”

The villagers were so frightened that they ran away. Only one brave man stayed where he was, face to face with the couple who were supposed to be dead. He really was brave, because the people in this tale mistake the couple for returning ghosts. But he asked the beggars questions until he understood the whole story, and then he went after the others and told them all about the five muffins. They could hardly believe it.

But what was to be done with two people who had gone to their own funeral for the love of muffins? In the story’s village, the elders believed that anyone who had been carried out on the green stretcher and laid on the funeral pyre could never come back into the village, or the whole village would suffer. So the elders built a little hut in an empty meadow outside the village, and the beggar and his wife lived there.

From that day on, they were known as the muffin beggar and the muffin beggar’s wife. Many old women and children from the village brought them muffins every morning and evening, because they felt sorry for them. After all, hadn’t they loved muffins so much that they had almost died for them?

About this story

This story comes from Tales of the Sun; or, Folklore of Southern India (1890), by Pandit S. M. Natesa Sastri and Mrs. Howard Kingscote, who gathered tales told in South Indian homes. The “muffins” are tosai (dosa), the thin savoury pancakes made from rice and black gram that are still a favourite breakfast across South India.

Stories of a married couple who hold a silence contest over something small are told in many parts of the world, and this version turns the private contest into a public misunderstanding.

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. The couple are mistaken for dead and nearly burned on funeral pyres before speaking; both survive.

A closer reading

An indivisible fifth cake is a problem the couple creates for itself. The contest then makes silence look like victory even as the costs rise from hunger to danger. Each person hears the villagers’ mistaken conclusion and could correct it, but keeps measuring success only by who gets the extra portion.

The neighbors first act from concern: they investigate the closed house and pay for the funeral. After the couple speaks, fear becomes exclusion, followed by continued food gifts. The result mixes punishment with care rather than simply rewarding or condemning the couple. The final name also turns their private obsession into a lasting public identity.

Try this with the story

Draw five circles and find two fair ways to share them between two people. Then mark three moments when either character could stop the contest, noting what has been lost or risked by each point. Explain why abandoning the rule would be wiser than winning it.

Think about it

• How could the beggar and his wife have shared five muffins fairly?
• Why did nobody in the village guess what was really going on?
• Was winning the extra muffin worth it? Why or why not?

Related stories

• Nasreddin Hodja and the Smell of Soup — another funny story about a poor man and his food
• The Brahmarakshas And The Hair — another tale from the same South Indian collection
• The Brahmin’s Dream — another tale about a poor man whose daydreams of food go wrong