The Beggar and the Five Muffins

If muffins made from this rice wouldn't make you play dead, you're not committed enough.

Salutations, reader! This week's story comes to us from India. The Beggar and the Five Muffins is a story of a super intense competition between a husband and wife. Over muffins. Hey, we've all been there. Click the link above to read the story, and continue below to analyze it with me.

There's actually a lot to this story. First, we have the food infatuation. When they were first able to taste these muffins, they were in love. It's clear they've never had this food before. Then, the wife is able to save enough rice to make them some more of those delicious muffins. By this point, I know that what I call muffins and what the characters call muffins are two entirely different foods, but I'm still on board. I even understand that they don't want to tear their beloved fifth muffin into pieces. What I don't understand is their contest.

If they didn't move for three days, they would have a whole host of problems. Let's just say, I would have lost this contest as soon as I needed to use the bathroom. This story is already unreal, but then the police start breaking into their house and still they don't move. It gets downright absurd when the townspeople delcare the beggar and his wife dead and neither of them correct the mob. It's into dangerous mental territory when the beggar only speaks because he is literally about to be burned alive. Over muffins.

Either this is a humorous story that isn't meant to be thought about for too long, or it's a philosophical tale to tell us something about life. Since overanalyzing is what we do here, let's go with the second option.

I see this not as a story about tasty food, but one about greed. The beggar and his wife didn't taste muffins until they went to a fancy party and feast. Since they have nothing, I suppose it's not too hard to give them food they've never had before.

Even when the wife saved food to make the muffins, there is no problem. It seems like they still had enough to eat, more or less, and she was able to ask for what she needed to make the muffins. The only problem comes when they're trying to split the muffins between the two of them.

Neither of them wanted to miss out on the third muffin. They don't even debate about giving the third muffin to someone else, like the neighbor who gave them the black pulse. Instead, they create an extreme contest and go to extreme lengths to try to get that extra muffin for themselves.

In the end, the wife wins the contest, but they both lose. After they are realized to not be dead, they are cast out from the village. They lose everything they had, however little it is, except for their daily supply of muffins. I know the old ladies and young children were trying to be nice by bringing them muffins after that, but I see it as cruel. It's because of those muffins that they lost everything else. They didn't value what they had, so now they have a house in the middle of a meadow and those dang muffins.

I bet the really mean kids brought them five muffins.

The moral of this story is not to let your greed get the better of you. Alternatively, if you made an odd number of baked goods for an even number of people, just cut the last one in half.

Have a different moral? Think the beggar and his wife were absolutely justified? Have another story you want me to talk about? Comment below! And come back next week to see me turn this into a modern story. Because no one has ever written a story about greed in our modern society.