Dark was the night and fearful the atmosphere. The howling of the jackals mingled with the weird laughter of the unearthly beings. Flashes of lightning revealed ghastly faces.
But King Vikram did not swerve. He climbed the ancient tree and brought down the corpse. However, as soon as he began crossing the desolate cremation ground, with the corpse lying astride on his shoulder, the vampire that possessed the corpse said, "O King, the way you are toiling hard to achieve your goal is commendable. Generally, a king takes counselling on matters pertaining to administration from his efficient ministers. But sometimes even the so called efficient ministers may misguide the king on certain things. Probably in your case also, you have been misled to this venture by the advice of someone. I shall prove this with the following story."
The vampire went on : In olden days, the village of Sripur was administered by a chief by name Srinath. He used to take the advice of an eminent scholar Debnath of the same village in resolving issues related to the village administration. Debnath with his sound logic and analytical capabilities, used to assist Srinath in taking decisions.
It so happened that there was an old man in the village by name Trimurthy, who was nearly fifty years old. He fell ill and could not do any work. His son Trisang was a healthy young man. But being a jobless youth, he started begging in the village to take care of himself and his family. Once he happened to go to the house of Debnath for begging much to the chagrin of the scholar. He rebuked Trisang, "You’re an able-bodied young man. Aren’t you ashamed of begging? So far you were doing nothing and depending on your father. Now when your father is unwell, you have started depending on others. If I see you begging again, I shall punish you."
Now the youth got scared and he fled from the village itself, making his ailing father really desperate. Taking pity on the sick man, Debnath told the chief of the village, "It’s the duty of the chief to take care of the destitute persons. So you must engage someone to take care of the sick old man on a daily basis." The chief at first was not impressed with this suggestion. He said, "It is because of you that his son quit the village. Now you are shifting his responsibility to me." Then Debnath explained to the chief, "We can’t encourage a healthy young man to beg, but at the same time, we cannot ignore his ailing helpless father."
