The Jungle

A king once got separated from his kinsmen while chasing a deer. He wandered alone in the forest. As dusk fell, he knocked at the door of a tiny cottage in the jungle. It was opened by a poor woodcutter who gave the ‘stranger’ a warm welcome. He offered him his own bed to sleep along with some simple but tasty food.

In the morning, while taking leave of the wood cutter, the king disclosed his real identity and asked him, what he could give in return for his hospitality. The wood cutter being a simpleton asked, “Can you give me a place where I can cut trees and sell them?” The king took him far away to the edge of another jungle and said, “This is yours from today. Do what you like with it.”

The wood cutter would cut trees and burn them to make coal, because they were too heavy for him to carry to the market place. Several months passed. The woodcutter was very happy. When the monsoon season started, there was heavy rainfall and the wood became wet. The ground was full of slush, so it was impossible to burn the wood to make coal. He had no choice but to carry the wet logs of wood to the market to sell it. When he showed the wood to the buyer, the buyer offered a sum that was a hundred times more than he was paying earlier. The wood cutter was confused! Earlier he was supplying coal whereas now it was wood and that too, wet wood! Where was the catch? The buyer told him that the wood that he had brought was no ordinary wood, it was real Sandalwood! The wood cutter realised what a fool he had been. He had cut and burnt hundreds of Sandalwood trees to make coal, little realizing the value of this precious wood. Had he known, by now he could have been a very, very rich man.

Let us understand the value of the human body given to us by the Almighty. We actually burn our bodies at both ends. Most of us indulge in burning our energies in doing futile things that eventually have no value nor meaning. But, by the time we realise that we are wasting our lives, it is perhaps too late. The sooner we realize, the better chance we shall have to put to good use our bodies as well as our lives.