In my eighth grade, I began travelling by the bus to my school. It was then my neighbour Padmaja used to travel with me. I remember she was a Libran sun sign too. Back then I asked people their birthdate for find out about their western sun sign.
These days it more satisfying to know people on a one-on-one basis. From my school I don’t remember having a lot of friends but the few that I made were long standing even without any contact.
So, every day, we would travel together once we got to know in school that we were travelling to the same area. When we realised that we were neighbours then our travel companionship began way up to shifted from her home to another school.
It was often while travelling with her, she made me feel like puffed up about me. I basked in her confidence in me, a rare occurrence in my life. She made me feel that I had everything covered in my school and personal life.
As if the anecdotes that I shared with her were perfect and flawless, hindsight tells me it was otherwise. So, I remember the story of the mosquito and the horse. Back then I thought I was the horse, now I realise I am the bullying mosquito.
I remember this story because she shared her Russian folktale book with me. I enjoyed reading them and when the time came for me to return it, I did so, I brimmed with happiness of having read the collection of folktales. Maybe I had inadvertently hinted on my desire to read it again.
She was a large-hearted person and told me to keep the book as a gift from her. I protested and apologised to her for forcing her to relinquish the book to me. But after much persuasion I accepted her gift. I cannot recollect if I got her any return gift. I could be rather insensitive in my high school days.
The Russian Folktale
In the green field with rich pasture to graze a horse was relaxing after a run. He was lazily chewing on the grass near him and swaying his tail brushing off a persistent mosquito.
Mosquito was piqued that the horse was not impressed by his presence. The mosquito quite boastfully declared about his long lineage and strength with which he had brought down many animals and a domesticated horse was no match to him.
The horse would not be bothered about boastful speech, so he just agreed to everything that was spoken by the mosquito. Yes, mastering made the mosquito quick to be offended and he declared if the horse wished to see his prowess in bring him down.
By now the horse had enough of the mosquito’s puffed up proud talk. When the horse tried to get up and move away, the mosquito followed singing insistently in his ears. Spoke how he bought down an entire army of humans just last week.
When the horse looked up with tired eyes of utter boredom. Looking in the horse eyes, the mosquito immediately suggested that he would call his brothers-in-arm and bring the horse down. Horse sluggishly agreed.
The mosquito called out to his brethren and all of them took their place all over the horse. The horse confirms if all the mosquitoes are securely perched on him. He then, threw himself on the ground and rolled from side to side squashing all the mosquitoes in the process. Until there were left only the bullying mosquito and a foot soldier with a broken wing.
The querulous mosquito who was wise enough to be seated above other mosquitoes and so he managed to escape. When the last soldier reported to him that if there were five or more mosquitoes then the horse’s hoof would have been consumed too.
The deluded mosquito left stating that he needs to share his victory with other insect community that an army of small sized insect have overpowered a huge horse and proving their unconquerable strength.
The folktale ends with a touch of irony and no change having been occurred to the two characters – one was nonchalant, and other was delusional of his prowess. But it does something else to the readers.
Audio version of the folktale:
Lessons from the Folktale
The are couple of lesson embedded in this story, of course the mosquito’s boastful quality really get obvious right from the beginning. When the foot soldier confirms this delusion, it made me sit up.
In my life, I have seen some struggles but that does not make puff with pride. It simply tells me that the past me believed that I was the horse when I was the mosquito. My fake persona got busted when I reflect now.
Self-Interpretation
Even when I read it back then, it made me stop because it was first story in the collection. It took me a long time to understand the inner meanings and interpretation. But the real message that came to me was a memory of that friend and our friendship who made going to and coming back from school such a joy.
The fact that I could be a foolish proud mosquito while like the nonchalant horse my friend accepted my falsification of my self-perception. I was older than her and yet even now I am not grown up and balanced in life.
Padmaja wherever you may be, I think you are one of the best listeners of my life. So, a friendship that allows you to be yourself whether you are good or bad is worth in gold. I often think about my lack of happy memories from my school days, then suddenly an incident which happened surround the returning or travelling to school were more powerful like the horse and less an annoyance like a mosquito. There is pride in the friendship with a junior student who was two years my junior.
We kept up our friendship until she shifted to another place. But later in Technical Writer meeting we caught up on our friendship. It was my mistake that I lost contact because my phone got changed and I lost her contact number since I didn’t know how to back up my contacts to the new phone.
If the universe chances me another meeting, I would be overjoyed to meet my friend again, though she was younger than me, she was much wiser than I will ever be.
Credit: Audio Enhanced by ChatGPT
Itinerant Storyteller 