The Cursed Elephant's Bath

The king's favorite royal elephant, usually calm and obedient, suddenly refused to enter the bathing pool each morning, growing agitated and distressed the moment he was led anywhere near the water. The royal mahouts, baffled and worried he might be cursed or ill, could find no visible wound or sickness to explain it.

Tenali Raman, asked to investigate, spent an entire morning simply watching the elephant from a distance rather than approaching him directly. He noticed the elephant would glance nervously toward the water's surface each time he neared it, flinching as if startled by something within the pool itself.

Looking closely at the water, Tenali Raman found the true cause: a large, reflective boulder near the pool's edge cast the elephant's own enormous shadow-shape directly onto the water's surface at that hour of the morning, distorted by ripples into something the elephant mistook, each time, for another massive creature lurking beneath. Tenali Raman had the boulder moved slightly, breaking the reflection, and the elephant, seeing nothing more than ordinary water the very next morning, walked calmly in to bathe exactly as he always had.