The Three Delicate Brahmins

Betaal spoke again from his perch on Vikramaditya's shoulder, telling of three brahmin brothers, each raised in extreme luxury and each secretly convinced he was the most refined and delicate of the three. When a dispute arose over whose sensitivity was genuinely greatest, they agreed to travel and seek judgment from a wise king known for settling difficult questions.

Along the way, the first brother slept one night on a bed of seven soft mattresses, yet woke complaining bitterly of a bruise on his side — investigation revealed a single bent strand of hair had somehow found its way beneath the lowest mattress. The second brother, seeing smoke rising from a distant kitchen at dinnertime, immediately clutched his stomach and doubled over, insisting the mere smell of food from so far away had already filled his stomach and made him unbearably full. The third brother, resting in the shade of a tree at midday, leapt up shrieking in pain when a single flower petal drifted down and landed on his bare arm, certain he had been struck by something monstrous.

The king, hearing all three accounts, was asked to judge which brother's suffering was the most genuine and severe. "Tell me, Vikram," Betaal demanded, "which of the three deserved to be believed?" Vikramaditya answered: "None of them, truly — for suffering this exaggerated, cultivated entirely by a life that never once faced real hardship, is not delicacy at all, but a kind of performance even its owner has come to believe. True sensitivity is earned by feeling deeply for others; this was merely self-absorption dressed up as refinement." His answer given, the vow of silence broke once more, and Betaal vanished back toward the tree.