The Barber's Bargain

One morning, Emperor Akbar summoned the royal barber for his usual shave. As the barber worked, carefully as always, Akbar was in an unusually generous mood. "Ask me for anything you like today," the emperor said, "and whatever it is, within reason, I shall grant it."

The barber, delighted by his good fortune, thought quickly. He did not ask for gold or land, for he suspected the emperor might refuse a request that was too large outright. Instead, he said, "Your Majesty is most gracious. All I ask is this: for every hair on my head, give me one gold coin."

Akbar laughed, thinking it a modest request — a man's head could not hold so very many hairs, after all — and agreed at once.

But when the royal treasurer sat down to count, he realized the trap too late. A human head holds well over a hundred thousand hairs, and Akbar had promised a gold coin for each one. To pay the barber in full would empty a significant portion of the royal treasury — and yet the emperor had given his word before witnesses, and a king's word could not simply be broken.

Troubled, Akbar called for Birbal and explained the situation.

Birbal thought for only a moment before smiling. "Your Majesty need not break your promise at all," he said. "Simply tell the barber that you will happily pay one gold coin for every hair on his head — but only once each hair has been counted, one by one, in front of the full court, with the royal treasurer verifying each count aloud before the coin is paid."

Akbar saw the wisdom in this at once and summoned the barber back. The barber, delighted, sat proudly before the court as the counting began — but it soon became painfully clear how long such a count would take. Hair by hair, verified aloud, one coin at a time — the process would have taken months of the barber's life, sitting still in the court every single day.

By the end of the first exhausting day, having earned only a handful of coins, the barber understood the trap he had built for himself. He begged the emperor's forgiveness, withdrew his outrageous request, and gratefully accepted a smaller, fair reward instead — one Birbal had, in truth, planned for him all along.