The Case of the Missing Mangoes

The king's prized mango orchard, home to a rare and exceptionally delicious variety, was being raided nightly, with dozens of ripe mangoes vanishing before morning despite guards posted at every entrance. Each guard, questioned in turn, swore honestly he had seen absolutely nothing unusual all night.

Tenali Raman, asked to investigate, spent a night hidden in the orchard himself rather than trusting secondhand reports, and discovered the truth: it was not a human thief at all, but a troop of clever monkeys who descended silently from overhanging trees just outside the orchard's boundary — technically never crossing through any guarded entrance, exactly as the guards had truthfully reported.

Rather than punish the guards for what was genuinely not their failure, Tenali Raman suggested a simple, humane solution: planting a second, less prized mango tree just outside the orchard's wall, positioned to satisfy the monkeys' appetite without requiring them to raid the king's finest trees at all. The raids stopped entirely, the guards were vindicated, and the king, amused by the solution, remarked that Tenali Raman had solved the mystery not by hunting for someone to blame, but by understanding what was actually happening.