The Tortoise and the Hare: A Fable Retold
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Authors
Husain, Zakir
Issue Date
1970
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
The foreword describes this book--in landscape format, about 8¼ x 6½, 41 pages long--as a children's story for adults. It was Husain's last book written in Urdu before his death. The story is set in a contemporary Indian scene. A tortoise tries to approach a fast-paced teacher walking to school. After some difficulties in understanding each other, and especially after impatient interruptions from the teacher, the tortoise can ask his question about a race long before between a tortoise and a hare. Did it happen, and who won? The teacher promises to bring a historian the next day to answer the question. Simple full-page illustrations of two and three colors punctuate the story every few pages. The teacher of history is insulted to receive a question about fairy tales, but later recommends that the tortoise ask the Professor of Ancient Culture, Civilisation and Literature the next day. The tortoise wonders what kind of learning humans go in for these days, when a simple, straightforward question ties them in knots (12). The doctor versed in literature begins to answer the question by stating that India and Greece excelled in fables, which reach back to Buddist times in India and are concentrated in the Jataka tales. In Greece the fables are ascribed to Aesop. The doctor breaks into a long disquisition and the tortoise falls asleep. The learned Dr. Philfor walks away. The teacher promises to bring a Professor of Philosophy the next day. The philosopher, Al Phailsuph al Hindi, offers various logical possibilities for understanding the probable or possible course of the race, including one possibility which actually equals the standard telling of the fable. He also includes the race according to Zeno's parodox, according to which, if the tortoise starts in the lead, he must end up winning. The tortoise loves this explanation! Too much discussion has given the philosopher a headache, and he needs to return home. At school, a significant conundrum is raised. A teacher has two students who scored a perfect 50 on a test, but one wrote better than the other and so was given a score of 55 out of 50. Tortoise and hare meet for their race, and tortoise gets his head start of two-and-a-half yards. In the midst of the race, a dog hunts down the hare and kills him! The tortoise is overwhelmed with regret and guilt for getting the hare into this situation. To measure one's own knowledge against another's, to confront one's own method of prayer against another's, to weigh one's own deeds against another's--all this is the way of error. It is a sin and I am guilty of that great sin (41).
Description
Citation
Publisher
National Book Trust, India
Selling agents India Book House,
Selling agents India Book House,