The story of two neighbours

 Tse-Ring and Cham-Ba were neighbours.

Tse-ring was a rich man, and he lived in a huge house. But he was greedy and stingy.

Though Cham-Ba’s house was small and he was poor; he was generous and helped others as much as he could.

Once two Sparrows had built a nest above the door of Cham-Ba’s house. When the two Sparrows were away and searching for food, the baby sparrow which had hatched, fell off the nest and broke its leg. Cham-Ba was about to come back home and saw the baby sparrow. Gently, he carried the Sparrow back to his home and tied the leg of the sparrow with a thread and healed it.

The baby Sparrow had in reality been a fairy.

So, after a few months, the sparrow brought in two grains and gave it to Cham-Ba.

“Plant the grains in your garden.” The Sparrow chirped at the poor man.

The poor man was surprised to hear the talking sparrow, and decided to follow the instructions of the sparrow.

A few months after that the grains had grown into beautiful plants and every plant had magnificent jewels in every branch!

Cham-Ba took the jewels to the next village and sold them. He received a lot of money and became very rich.

Tse-Ring came to know about his neighbour’s sudden wealth and came to talk to him.

Cham-Ba did not suspect anything wrong and told the Tse-Ring the story of the Sparrow.

The next day, Tse-Ring saw that two Sparrows had made a nest above his door too.

When the two older sparrows were away, Tse-Ring climbed up to the nest and pushed the little Sparrow down and broke its leg. After that Tse-Ring mended the leg of the Sparrow with a thread and put it back in the nest.

A month later, a sparrow came to Tse-Ring’s house and put two grains on the table of Tse-Ring’s house.

“This is in return for the kindness that you have shown me. Plant it and see what happens.”

Tse-Ring snatched the grains and planted them.

Later when the crops came up, he was horrified to find a large man with a large bundle of papers in his hands.

“I am your creditor from your previous life. You were in my debt. I have come back to take what is mine.”

After that the man took over all of Tse-Ring’s wealth and Tse-Ring was reduced to nearly the state of a slave in his house.

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Meanwhile Cham-Ba had to leave town for a new job and he left a bag of gold dust with Tse-Ring. Cham-Ba did not want the gold-dust in his home when he was not there, for fear of thieves.

Unfortunately, Cham-Ba did not know that Tse-Ring had become very poor or that Tse-Ring was a very greedy man.

When Cham-Ba came back from his trip, Tse-Ring filled up a sack of sand in a sack and gave it to Cham-Ba.

“Where is my gold?” Cham-Ba demanded angrily.

“I do not know!” Tse-Ring told the other man. “The gold has turned into this.”

Cham-Ba said nothing but he just walked away from there.

First he brought a monkey and taught it to say just one sentence. “I turned to this.”

A few days later, news spread around the village that Cham-Ba had opened a free school for children.

Now that Tse-Ring knew that he could not afford expensive education, he sent his son to the free school.

That evening when Tse-Ring went to the school, he saw Cham-Ba teaching many children and a monkey! But his own son was missing.

“Where is my son?” Tse-Ring demanded angrily.

“I turned to this.” The monkey said, over and over again, because that was the only thing it had been taught.

Tse-Ring had no choice but to give back Cham-Ba’s gold dust to take back his own son.