Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Lazy Crow


The summer was very hot. Water was scarce. A thirsty crow searched for water everywhere. At last she found a small amount of water in a tall pot made of clay. She could not reach the water to drink. She was worried. Then she remembered the story of the wise crow that gathered small pebbles and dropped them patiently into the water in a pot. This raised the water level and then he could drink it easily. But this crow was very lazy to collect a lot of small pebbles. She did not have the patience to follow the wise crow. So she lifted a large piece of rock with great effort and dropped it into the pot. The pot broke with a loud noise. All the water was lost. The lazy crow remained thirsty and flew away in shame.

When someone is seen to carry a very heavy load instead of carrying it repeatedly as smaller loads safely and more effortlessly, just because he is lazy to make more journeys, he is said to carry a foolishly heavy load or a 'lazy man's load'. There is a popular proverb in Malayalam, "Madiyan mala chumakkum" meaning that a lazy man carries a mountain!

In the story the crow was lazy to collect a large number of smaller stones and so dropped a large one with a great effort and that broke the pot. We must remember the wise words, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop!”

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© By Dr. Babu Philip, Professor, Cochin University of Science & Technology, Fine Arts Avenue, Kochi-682016, Kerala, India.

For more moral stories, parables and anecdotes for students kindly visit our web-site:

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This is Story No.24 in this site. Please click ‘Older Posts’ at the bottom of a page to read previous stories and click 'Newer Posts' at the bottom of a page to read newer stories in this site. Please click on a word in the 'Story Themes' to read stories on that theme.

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