The Old Woman and the Medicine Man

Hello, everyone,

    The story that I am going to tell you is of an old woman who loved to spread bad things about people. One day she went too far. Read on and find out how she was cured of this bad habit.

The Old Woman and the Medicine Man

     Once upon a time there was an old woman. Whenever she saw something she just would not try and understand the situation but go and speak about it to other people. Everybody was tired of her gossiping. She always found something to talk about. Just the other day a girl was rude to her mother and so she told everyone about it. That is how she was.

    Now on this particular day she went to a grocer’s shop to buy some sugar. As she was waiting for the shopkeeper to serve her she saw a young lady come into the shop and take a parcel that was there and go. Immediately she thought that that young lady had stolen that parcel that was on the shelf. Now she got excited she had some news to spread. She wanted the shopkeeper to serve her quickly so that she could go and tell everyone about it. At last it was her turn and she got served and she went straight to one of her friends to talk about it.

    “Do you know what I saw today when I went to buy sugar today?” she asked her friend.

    “No, what did you see?” her friend asked her.

    “Well, you know Divya?” she asked.

    “Yes, what about her?” her friend asked her.

    “Well as I was standing there to be served and she just came in and stole a parcel and went away,” she said, triumphantly as if she had done a great deed.

    “I don’t believe it,” her friend said, rather annoyed. “I know her she would never take anything without asking. You must have made a mistake.”

    “No, I tell you,” she persisted. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

    “That is funny,” her friend said. “She has never done such a thing before. She is very nice young lady. I like her.”

    “Ok,” the old woman said, “if you don’t believe me.”

    From there she went to another friend and another and another. Soon the word spread that Divya had stolen something from the grocer’s shop.

    Soon the grocer himself got this news and he was surprised.

    “That is funny,” he told the lady who had broken the news to him. “She has never taken anything from my shop. Who told you?”

     The lady told him the name. The shopkeeper got upset that anyone should spread such bad things about one of his customers. Also Divya was a very nice young lady. She had very good manners and she would never do anything to jeopardize her name. So he decided to investigate and find out who had spread these rumours. When he asked around he found out that it was that old lady who was responsible for this. He got rather angry.

    One day, this old woman came to his shop to buy some rice. The shopkeeper saw the opportunity. Luckily there was no-one in the shop and so he asked her about it.

    “I saw it with my own two eyes she took a parcel from your shelf and went away without telling you,” she insisted.

    “What you saw that day was that she had kept her parcel there for safekeeping,” he said. “She told me to look after it and she would come and collect it later and so she came and took it that day. It was her own parcel. You should be careful what you tell people in future. She is very nice girl and you have tried to ruin her good name. That is very bad.”

    The old woman went away from there shamefacedly. She felt ashamed now that she had spread such bad things about a very nice person. She sat and thought what to do. She became desperate. She did not know what to do. Then she had an idea. She went to a medicine man and told him about her problem.

    “Is there some medicine that you can give me so that I can put things right?” she asked him.

    The medicine man looked at for a while.

    “There is one thing you can do,” he said. “Take a bagful of feathers and go up a very high hill and then empty the bag there in the wind.”

    “Will that help?” the old woman asked him.

    “Just go and do as I tell you and then you come back to me,” he said.

    And so the old woman got lots of feathers and put them in a bag and went to the highest hill and emptied the bag there. All the feathers blew away with the wind and not one was left there. After doing this she went to the medicine man.

    “I have done what you told me to do,” she told him.

    “Now go and gather all those feathers again and bring them to me,” he said, calmly.

    The old woman stared at him wide eyed.

    “How can I get the feathers?” she asked. “They have all been blown away by the wind.”

    “Exactly,” the medicine man said. “You have ruined a perfectly good name of a nice person. You cannot go to each and every person and tell them that you have made a mistake just like the feathers. You have to be careful what you are saying. You cannot judge a person by one act. Our eyes could deceive us. Sometimes what you are seeing is not exactly what it is. Just be careful next time. Why don’t you just go and ask that lady’s forgiveness?”

    The old woman felt very ashamed of herself.

    “Yes, I will go and beg her forgiveness,” she said, with her head down.

    She did just that and from that day onwards she  was very careful and tried very hard not to gossip.