Volume VI, Issue 11-12
Story by The Mother
Video by Biswajita Mohapatra
Narration by Shruti Ramteke
Editor’s note: The Mother adapted and translated into French several stories from F. J. Gould’s 1911 book (“Youths’ Noble Path: A volume of moral instruction designed for the use of children, parents, and teachers and mainly based on Eastern tradition, poetry, and history’’), for the children of the Ashram school. First published under the title Belles Histoires, in 1951 Sri Aurobindo Ashram brought out an English re-translation under the title Tales of All Times.
Watch a short video on a tale on Cheerfulness from this book; this is one of the several tales on this theme that the Mother has retold. Biswajita Mohapatra has curated and edited the video; Shruti Ramteke has done the story narration.
WATCH
Read the story
In Persia, there was a woman who used to sell honey. She had a very pleasant manner, and customers thronged around her stall. And the poet who tells her story declares that even if she had sold poison, people would still have bought it from her as if it were honey.
A sour-tempered man saw what a great profit she made from her sweet wares and decided to take up the same trade.
So he set up a stall, but behind the rows of honey-pots his face was like vinegar. All those who came near were sullenly treated. And so everyone passed by, leaving him his wares. “Not even a fly ventured on his honey,” says the poet. By evening he had still earned nothing. A woman noticed him and said to her husband, “A bitter face makes bitter honey.”
Did the woman who sold honey smile only to attract customers? Let us rather hope that her cheerfulness came from her good nature. We are not in this world only to buy or sell; we should be here as comrades one to another. The good woman’s customers felt that she was something more than a honey-seller: she was a cheerful citizen of the world.
~ The Mother, CWM, 2: 190
