The Monkey With The Tom Tom

In a remote wood there lived a monkey, and one day while he was eating wood-apples, a sharp thorn from the tree ran into the tip of his tail, he tried his best to get it out but could not. So he proceeded to the nearest village, and calling the barber asked him to oblige him by removing the thorn.

“Friend barber,” said the monkey, “a thorn has run into my tail. Kindly remove it and I will reward you.”

The barber took up his razor and began to examine the tail; but as he was cutting out the thorn he cut off the tip of the tail. The monkey was greatly enraged and said: –

“Friend barber, give me back my tail. If you cannot do that, give me your razor.”

The barber was now in a difficulty, and as he could not replace the tip of the tail he had to give up his razor to the monkey.

The monkey, went back to the wood with his razor thus trickishly acquired. On the way he met an old woman, who was cutting fuel from a dried-up tree.

“Grandmother, grandmother,” said the monkey, “the tree is very hard. You had better use this sharp razor, and you will cut your fuel easily.”

The poor woman was very pleased, and took the razor from the monkey. In cutting the wood she, of course, blunted the razor, and the monkey seeing his razor thus spoiled, said: –

“Grandmother, you have spoiled my razor. So you must either give me your fuel or get me a better razor.”

The woman was not able to procure another razor. So she gave the monkey her fuel and returned to her house bearing no load that day.

The roguish monkey now put the bundle of dry fuel on his head and proceeded to a village to sell it. There he met an old woman seated by the roadside and making puddings. Said the monkey to her: –

“Grandmother, grandmother, you are making puddings and your fuel is already exhausted. Use mine also and make more cakes.”

The monkey had found the tom tom abandoned near the village shrine, its leather head still tight and resonant. He struck it once, delighted by the sound that rolled across the forest like distant thunder. Soon he was beating it constantly, obsessively, creating a rhythm that had no origin in tradition or purpose, merely the fever of possession.

The forest creatures gathered at the edges of the clearing, disturbed by the unceasing percussion. The birds’ evening songs could not be heard. The cicadas’ chorus was drowned out. Even the temple bells seemed diminished by the tom tom’s arrogant voice. The monkey, intoxicated by the power of making noise that compelled attention, could not stop. To lay down the drum felt like drowning.

When hunters came following the sound, drawn by its persistence, they captured the monkey easily – his hands were too busy with the tom tom to defend himself. In the hunter’s net, finally silent, the monkey understood what the forest had been trying to tell him through the eyes of a thousand creatures: the loudest voice in the room is often the voice of its own undoing.

Moral

Foolish actions committed without thinking lead to shame and loss. The monkey’s thoughtless drumming teaches that pride in making noise often blinds us to real danger ahead.

Historical & Cultural Context

This tale comes from the vast ocean of Indian folk literature, a tradition stretching back thousands of years across the subcontinent. Indian folk tales were passed down orally through generations of village storytellers, each adding their own local color while preserving the essential wisdom within. The Monkey With The Tom Tom reflects the values, humor, and spiritual depth that characterize this ancient narrative tradition.

What This Tale Teaches Us Today

Old stories keep their power because their lessons never stop being useful. Here is how this one still applies:

• Stories that have survived for centuries have done so because their lessons still work.
• Traditional stories remind us that wisdom belongs to many cultures. No single tradition holds all the answers.
• Reading folk tales aloud to children builds vocabulary, imagination, and a sense of cultural inheritance.

Why This Story Still Matters

The Monkey With The Tom Tom joins a vast global library of folk tales that human beings have been telling one another for thousands of years. Every culture has produced its own stories, but the deepest themes – courage, kindness, cleverness, loyalty, the cost of greed – appear again and again in different clothes. Modern readers who spend time with folk tales inherit something precious: a sense that people have always wrestled with the same basic questions, and that good stories can still help us find good answers. That is why these tales persist. Each one is a small tool for living, handed down quietly through generations.

Cultural Context and Continuing Influence

Folk tales like this one survived for hundreds of years through oral storytelling before any scholar thought to write them down. Grandparents told them to grandchildren, travelers traded them along roads and rivers, and mothers repeated them to babies who would one day repeat them to their own children. Each small retelling sharpened the story, discarded unnecessary parts, and polished the essential lesson. That long process of refinement is why a good folk tale feels so weighty – it has been shaped by thousands of listeners across generations, each contributing something small to the story we read today.

Modern readers sometimes wonder whether folk tales are still relevant in an age of apps and smartphones. The answer is yes, perhaps more than ever. The technology changes, but the underlying questions – about kindness, courage, loyalty, greed, family, fear, love – do not. These are the same questions that children asked around a fire in ancient India, around a hearth in medieval Ireland, around a campfire in 19th-century Korea. And they are the same questions children ask their parents today, just phrased differently. That is why a family that reads folk tales together is doing real cultural and emotional work, not simply entertaining itself.

Reading Folk Tales With Children

Reading folk tales aloud to children is one of the oldest and most effective forms of moral education. Unlike a lecture or a rule, a story slides past a child’s natural resistance and plants its lesson in the imagination, where it quietly grows. Years later, when the child meets a real situation that resembles the story – a bully at school, a dishonest coworker, a moment of temptation – the old tale rises to the surface of memory and offers guidance. That is why parents and teachers across every culture have trusted stories to do the work of raising good humans, long before formal schools or textbooks existed.

When reading this story with a young listener, try pausing at key moments and asking what the child thinks will happen next. Let them guess, even if they are wrong. That small act of prediction turns a passive listener into an active thinker. After the story ends, a simple open question – “What would you have done?” or “Who do you think was the smartest character?” – invites the child to connect the tale to their own life. Those conversations are where real learning happens, not during the reading itself but in the quiet moments that follow.

Older children and teenagers sometimes think they have outgrown folk tales. In reality, the best tales only deepen with age. A ten-year-old hears the surface plot; a fifteen-year-old notices the irony; a twenty-year-old sees the economic and political pressures on the characters; a forty-year-old understands the parents in the story for the first time. A good folk tale is a gift that keeps unfolding for decades. Families who read and reread the same stories across the years discover this naturally, and pass the discovery down.

A Final Word

Every folk tale carries within it the accumulated judgment of thousands of listeners across many generations. When a story has been told for a thousand years and still moves children today, that is not an accident. It is proof that the story is saying something true about the human condition. The wiser the listener, the more they see in a tale they have heard a hundred times before. Reading these stories slowly, out loud, with children beside us, we are joining the longest conversation our species has ever had with itself. Every tale we share is a quiet vote for patience, for meaning, and for the old idea that a good story is one of the finest things one generation can hand down to the next.

We hope this telling gave you something worth carrying into your day – a small lesson, a useful image, a question to ask your child at dinner. Folk tales do their best work in the hours and years after the reading ends, quietly shaping how we see the world and each other. Thank you for spending time with this story, and for keeping the old tradition of careful listening and thoughtful retelling alive.

Reflection & Discussion

1. Why did the monkey keep playing the drum even as danger approached?
2. What makes us ignore warnings when we’re having fun?
3. How can we tell the difference between joy and foolishness?

Did You Know?

• Monkeys are highly social animals and can recognize themselves in mirrors, showing a level of self-awareness.
• India has one of the richest oral storytelling traditions in the world, with tales dating back thousands of years.
• Many Indian folk tales were passed down through generations before being written down.