Chhura and the Magic Horn

In the green hills where the Mizo people live, there are a hundred tales told about a fellow named Chhura. He was clever and foolish all at once, and he was forever getting himself into scrapes and, somehow, mostly out of them again.

One day Chhura came by the most wonderful thing. It was a horn, an ordinary-looking deer’s horn, except that it was not ordinary at all. If you spoke kindly to one end of it, out poured warm, fluffy cooked rice, as much as you liked. And from the other end came savoury cooked meat, hot and ready to eat.

Chhura could hardly believe his luck. For a while he was the happiest man in the hills. Whenever he was hungry, the horn fed him. When his neighbours fell on hard times, he quietly shared his magic supper with them, and no one in his village ever went to bed hungry. The horn asked for nothing and gave and gave.

But Chhura had one great weakness. He simply could not keep a good thing to himself. The cleverness of having such a treasure swelled up inside him until he was fit to burst with it. And so, at a big village feast, surrounded by people he hardly knew, Chhura could not resist. He pulled out his horn and showed it off to everyone, calling out, “Look! Look what I have! Rice from this end, meat from that. Have you ever seen the like?”

Now, among the crowd was a sly fellow with quick fingers and quicker plans. He admired the horn loudly, and praised Chhura to the skies, and kept his cup filled, until Chhura grew sleepy and proud and careless. And while Chhura dozed, well pleased with himself, the sly fellow quietly swapped the magic horn for a plain old deer’s horn that looked just the same.

Chhura went home the next morning still glowing with his own cleverness. But when he spoke to his horn and held it out for breakfast, nothing came. Not a grain of rice. Not a scrap of meat. Just an ordinary, empty horn.

Chhura sat down with a bump and scratched his head. He had been given the finest gift in all the hills, and he had quite literally boasted it straight out of his own hands. After that, the tales say, Chhura learned to hold his good fortune a little more quietly. Though, knowing Chhura, probably not for very long.