Kafal Pako, Main Nai Chakho

Long ago, a poor widow lived with her little daughter at the edge of a forest. One summer morning she climbed the hill and filled a basket with kafal — the small red berries that ripen for only a few weeks in Chait and Baisakh.

'Guard these well,' she told her daughter, 'and don't eat a single one. We will sell them and buy grain.' Then she went to the fields.

All day the sun beat down on the basket. When the mother came home that evening, tired and hungry, the kafal had dried and shrunk — the basket looked half empty. In a flash of anger she struck the girl, crying, 'You ate them!' The child fell, and did not get up again.

That night it rained. In the morning the berries had soaked up the moisture and swelled back, filling the basket to the brim. The mother understood what she had done. Weeping, she died of grief.

The people say both became birds. Every summer the daughter-bird sings in the forest: 'Kafal pako, main nai chakho' — the kafal are ripe, but I did not taste them. And the mother-bird answers: 'Puro puthai puro' — they were full, my child, they were full all along.