A housewife knew a story. She also knew a song. But she kept them to herself, never told anyone the story or sung the song. Caged within this woman, the story and the song felt choked. They wanted release, wanted to run away. One day, when she the housewife was sleeping with her mouth open, the story and the song escaped. The story took the shape of a pair of shoes and sat outside the house. The song took the shape of a man’s coat, and hung on a peg.
When the woman’s husband came home, he looked at the coat and the shoes, and asked her, ‘Who is visiting?’
‘No one,’ she said.
‘Then whose coat and shoes are those?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied.
He wasn’t satisfied with her answer. So the two had a fight. The husband flew into a rage, picked up his blanket and went to the temple to sleep……
All the lamp flames of the town, once they were put out, gathered at a temple and spent the night there, gossiping. This night, one of the flames was late.
‘Why are you so late tonight?’ The others asked her.
The latecomer explained that at her house, the couple quarrelled late into the night over shoes and coat that were actually an untold story and an unsung song. ‘The story and the song got suffocated inside; so they got out and turned into a coat and a pair of shoes. The woman doesn’t even know,’ she told it all.
The husband, was in the same temple, lying under blanket. He, heard the gossip among the flames and rushed home. Once home, he woke his wife up and asked her about her story and her song.
But she had forgotten both of them. ‘What story, what song?’ she said.
