Kids · 4 minThe Bird with Two Heads

Once upon a time, beside a lake full of lotus flowers, there lived a very strange bird called Bharunda. He had one body, two wings, two legs and one stomach. But he had two heads. Everybody called them Left Head and Right Head, which is what you would have called them too.

Most of the time the two heads got along. Two heads see more than one, so Bharunda always found the best fish and never flew into a tree. But they did argue: about which way to fly, about when to wake up, and most of all about who got to eat.

"It all goes into the same stomach," Right Head would say, "so it does not matter who eats." "It matters to the one who is chewing," Left Head would say.

One morning on the river bank, Right Head found a fruit that had fallen from a tree nobody had ever seen before. It was golden and soft, and it smelled of honey and ripe mango. Right Head took one bite and closed his eyes. "Oh," he said. "Oh, this is the most delicious thing in the whole world."

"Let me taste," said Left Head. "No need," said Right Head, with his mouth full. "Same stomach." And he ate it all, every bit, right down to the seed.

Left Head did not speak to Right Head for the rest of the day. That night he did not sleep. He lay awake thinking, "Same stomach, he says. Very well. I shall eat something too, and I shall not share it."

Next morning, at the edge of the forest, Left Head saw a bush covered in shiny purple berries. Every bird knew those berries. Even the crows, who will eat anything, left them alone. They were poison berries, and a single bunch could make even an elephant very, very ill.

Left Head stretched his neck towards them. "What are you doing?" cried Right Head. "Eating," said Left Head. "It all goes into the same stomach, doesn't it? So it does not matter who eats."

"Those are poison berries! If you eat them, we will both be sick! Or worse!" "You should have thought of that yesterday," said Left Head, and he opened his beak.

Right Head did the only thing he could think of. He put his own head in the way, between the beak and the berries. "I am sorry," he said. "I was greedy. I ate the whole fruit and I did not think of you at all, and I said 'same stomach' as if that made it fair. It did not. Please don't."

Left Head stopped with his beak still open. For a long moment nobody moved: not the bird, not the bush, not the little frog who had been watching from the river. Then Left Head closed his beak. "You have never said sorry before," he said. "I have never been this frightened before," said Right Head.

They walked away from the purple bush together, which was the only way they could walk. Then Right Head said, "Come on. I know where that tree is."

They went back to the river bank and searched until they found the strange tree, and there was one more golden fruit hanging from a low branch. Right Head picked it and held it out. "You first," he said. "All of it, if you like." Left Head took the first bite and closed his eyes. "Oh," he said. Then he gave the rest to Right Head.

From that day on, Bharunda had a rule: whatever one head found, the other head tasted first. They still argued about which way to fly and when to wake up. But they never again argued about who got to eat.

And so the elders say: when you live together, a good thing is only truly good when it is shared. And when anger tells you to hurt someone, remember that you may be hurting yourself as well.