The Folktale of Tees Maar Khañ: And the Hidden Lesson Therein

Khañ is not the surname ‘Khan’, but a Rajasthani word with an almost silent, nasal ‘n’ at the end.

As a Rajasthani folktale character, I have found Tees Maar Khañ to be largely unknown. And most of the people I have come across who do know about the character seem to think of the one misappropriated and gravely misportrayed by the namesake Bollywood film, which I personally never watched – out of protest.

Well then, let me tell you the story first, then I will unpack what it can teach us about the nuances of life, as most folktales usually do. This story seems to be a series of funny and amusing anecdotes, but subtle though it is, I promise you, there is a very crucial lesson to be learned.

Fair warning, the following is a combination of my distant memories as a child and whatever I could find online. So, certain threads are improvised. But I believe I have managed to capture the essence of the story quite fairly.

The Folktale

Long ago, in a kingdom now lost, there lived a young man by an unknown name in a small village with his mother. To his mother’s dismay, the boy was very lazy and somewhat irresponsible. He would lounge around their small house all day, while his mother went to work and cleaned and cooked.

Eventually, after a particularly long day, she gave him an ultimatum – to go to the next village and find a job. Why the next village you ask? Because everyone in this village already knew him and wouldn’t hire him to blow on their soup.

The journey to the next village was a full day long. He began early in the morning with a small bundle of clothes and parathas (flatbreads) made and packed by his mother.

The walk was long and tiring. But, around lunchtime he found a shaded spot under a nearby tree and unpacked his lunch. For some reason, there were a lot of flies where he sat. They would meander and sit upon his food again and again. In frustration, he smacked the parathas hard with his palm. When he looked down, he noticed a number of dead flies. He started counting – one … ten … twenty … thirty.

Thirty! He had killed thirty flies with one blow. He rather thought of that as something glorious to boast about. He packed up his stuff and quickly made his way to the destination village and arrived by evening. There he went to an inn and boasted about his grand endeavour.

It was just an amusing and unexpected story at first. But as the story slowly spread throughout the kingdom, some elements were lost and became assumed. Along the way, he was dubbed ‘Tees Maar Khañ’ – the one who killed thirty (by himself, in one fight). The fact that it was thirty ‘flies’ was lost in translation.

Now, in the capital of the kingdom, the King was facing an ongoing problem. A particular village in his kingdom was being terrorized by a tiger belonging to the adjacent jungle. The King had sent many envoys of soldiers, but the tiger proved to be too cunning.

When the King heard of Tees Maar Khañ, he was greatly impressed and decided to call upon this great warrior to assist with this critical problem, with promises of riches and rewards.

Tees Maar Khañ could not refuse a request from the King himself. So, after a few days of travelling, he arrived in the terrorized village upon his commandeered mule. He authoritatively declared a curfew after dark, though that was unnecessary as the terrorized villagers were already terrified to be caught outside after dark. Tees Maar Khañ patrolled the village to make sure no one was outside. All the huts and small houses were shut tightly, doors and windows fully closed, lest any amount of lamplight escaped through, accidently attracting the tiger. 

Tees Maar Khañ could barely see five feet in front of himself by the light of his flaming torch. He did find an old woman outside her home moving clay urns. When Tees Maar Khañ told the woman to get inside, he was scolded like a child. See, it was about to rain, and the woman couldn’t afford to leave her clay creations outside to be ruined by water.

So, hesitantly, Tees Maar Khañ helped the old lady move all the dozens of urns inside. It was a lot of work and he felt very tired afterwards. In return he was offered food which he ate graciously before resuming his patrolling. 

Now that the streets were empty, and because he felt rather sleepy from the work and the food, he decided to rest a little. He tied the mule to a tree trunk and settled down on the opposite side and dozed off.

He was awoken by the beginning drizzle of rain on his face. His torch had gone out and it was pitch dark. He couldn’t see anything. He slowly walked around the tree and felt around for the leash. He untied it and carefully walked to his assigned lodgings by memory. There he felt around for the mast and retied the mule and went inside and went to bed.

In the morning, he was awoken by noisy villagers outside his lodgings. He jumped out of bed in anger and marched outside and yelled at the villagers, ‘What is the matter?’

The villagers apologized for disturbing him, but expressed their immense relief and happiness that the honoured Tees Maar Khañ had caught the tiger so quickly. Caught what?

When Tees Maar Khañ followed the villagers' eyes, he saw that a large tiger was tied to the pole where his mule was supposed to be. Its mouth and front paws were bloody and the noose was around his neck somehow. The villagers congratulated him for so cleverly baiting the tiger with the mule.

Tees Maar Khañ was in shock and didn’t say or deny anything. Even this was misconstrued by the villagers as indifference and nonchalance. This, along with the capturing of the tiger on the very first night, made him the stuff of legends.

The King excitedly enrolled Tees Maar Khañ into his army and made him a captain. He was further given lodgings in the Palace itself and became a member of the court upon King’s personal request. He was invited to all the council meetings and consulted about important matters concerning the kingdom. And so Tees Maar Khañ lived in luxury and comfort for years like this.

But one day, the news came that an army from the neighbouring kingdom was marching to invade them. The King appointed Tees Maar Khañ as the commander of his army and promised him his daughter’s hand in marriage if Tees Maar Khañ came out victorious. That was an offer he could not refuse.

Tees Maar Khañ brought his army to the battleground just outside the borders of the kingdom. He was given the fastest horse and the best armour and the best sword.

But, Tees Maar Khañ wasn’t confident that he could maintain balance upon the horse. So, he instructed his men to tie his legs firmly to the horse’s side. They of course complied without question, murmuring to each other in reverence.

When the attacking army arrived, they fell into formation several hundred metres away, preparing for battle. Tees Maar Khañ waited and then finally pulled out his sword to give the command to charge. But, the sword was too heavy and Tees Maar Khan immediately let go of it in the same unsheathing motion, seemingly hurling it away to the side.

He panicked and accidentally squeezed his horse's side with his heels. The horse started galloping at full speed. Tees Maar Khañ forgot how to stop the horse and tried to jump off it, but realized his legs were bound to the horse. He panicked again, and looked around. He noticed a short but thick solitary leafless tree someway ahead on the battlefield and steered the horse towards it. Upon reaching the tree he grabbed its trunk in order to stop the horse.

Unbeknownst to him, the tree was actually dead and hollow, and came off its roots. Tees Maar Khañ panicked again, raising the trunk over his head and started screaming in terror. He was halfway to the attacking army.

Now, consider how it looked from the enemy’s perspective. The commander of the attacking army had heard of the hero Tees Maar Khañ and had fully expected him to be the commander. But, instead of commanding his army to charge, this maniac deliberately threw away his sword and charged by himself. Not only that. He also uprooted a not-so-small tree with his bare hands and was now carrying it over his head and roaring like a lion.

This was Tees Maar Khañ? The man who killed thirty in one fight? He hadn’t believed the story. But he did now. The commander’s will faltered and he ordered a full retreat.

By the time the enemy army started retreating, Tees Maar Khañ finally remembered how to stop his horse. He let go of the hollow trunk and yanked on the reins. The horse slowly came to a stop. Tees Maar Khañ just stood there, upon his horse, staring at the retreating army until they were gone. His army cheered.

The story quickly spread in all the land. Every King, distant or otherwise, knew of Tees Maar Khañ now. No one would dare attack his kingdom till the time he was alive. He married the King’s daughter and lived thereafter as a legend to be reckoned with. The End.

The Lesson

Tees Maar Khañ is an exaggerated fictional story about a character who wins in life due to sheer dumb luck. Though this folktale is mostly meant to amuse and entertain, it still holds a subtle mirror to an innate truth about our world – that luck and chance are inevitable parts of all success.

We are usually made to believe that we have control over our future and our destiny. And to an extent, we do. But to a greater extent, we simply do not. We all fail or succeed due to luck as much as we fail or succeed due to our abilities and effort. There are people who are extremely hardworking, but do not succeed the way they want to because they do not have luck on their side. Then, there are many who are born into extreme luck, but do not succeed because they are not hardworking. Only those who are both hardworking and have learned to take advantage of their luck truly succeed. And we are talking about conventional success here, not the unconventional kind. Or perhaps, this applies to any kind of success. Well, you decide.

The point is: Success or Failure is largely determined by a combination of circumstances and conditions. You’ll find that successful people have often grown up in somewhat adequate circumstances and with the right kind of influence around them. For every effort they have made, there have been several other things that were already just right for them. And not so successful people often had the opposite circumstances, conditions and/or opportunities.

Success  =  Effort  +  Luck

I am not trying to downplay anybody’s efforts here. But when we hear about success stories, this factor of luck and chance is often forgotten – due to survivorship bias. Not only do we forget this, even the people who talk about their success don’t usually talk about their luck and make it seem that their success was wholly dependent on their skill and effort. Afterall, who would want to admit that, in addition to their effort, they also got lucky.

So, naturally, we start thinking that people who haven’t succeeded as much are lazy and don’t deserve success. That is also not true. Not all failure is due to lack of effort. A huge amount of failure in this world can be attributed to a lack of luck, despite a huge amount of effort. Of course effort plays a role. But luck plays an equal role, if not a greater one.

We often put successful people on a pedestal, trying to emulate them in order to replicate their success, but are confused when it doesn’t work. And we are often too harsh to others and ourselves for our failures thinking that our efforts should have made up for any amount of bad luck. But that’s just not how it works. There might be rare exceptions. But as a rule, effort cannot replicate luck, and luck cannot replicate effort.

This knowledge is essential in building a more compassionate world. We need to be much less harsh to ourselves for failing, recognizing that our luck was perhaps short. Similarly, we need to be empathetic towards others, recognizing the role of luck in their lives. We also need to not let our own success get to our heads, nor idealize other people for their success too much, remembering that luck probably definitely played a role, no matter how fantastically able they have portrayed themselves to be.

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