Nala and Damayanti

Damayanti was a princess so kind and so lovely that word of her spread to every corner of the world. And of all the people she heard tell of, there was one she most wished to meet: a good and gentle king named Nala, famous everywhere for his honest heart. The two of them had never even met. And yet, from all they had each heard of the other, they were already half in love.

When it came time for Damayanti to choose a husband, her father held a great gathering, a swayamvara, where she would walk among all her suitors and place a garland of flowers around the neck of the one she chose. Kings and princes came from everywhere. And the news travelled so far that even four of the gods came down from the heavens, each one hoping Damayanti might choose him.

But the gods knew her heart was already set on Nala. So they played a trick. Each of the four took on Nala’s exact face and form, his smile, his stance, his very way of standing. Then they stood in a row beside the real Nala, so that now there were five Nalas, every one of them identical.

Damayanti walked into the hall with her garland and stopped quite still. Five men, exactly the same, looked back at her. Her true love stood somewhere among them. And if she chose wrong, she would lose him forever.

So she looked. Not quickly, but carefully, the way you look when everything depends on it. And slowly, she began to notice small things.

Four of the men did not blink, not even once. Four of them cast no shadow on the floor. Their feet hovered the tiniest bit above the ground, and their flower garlands were as fresh as the instant they were picked, not one petal wilting. They were perfect. Too perfect.

But the fifth man blinked. His feet rested in the dust of the floor. A bead of sweat shone on his brow in the warm crowded hall, and his garland had begun, ever so slightly, to droop. He was not perfect at all. He was real. He was human. He was Nala.

Damayanti smiled. And without a moment’s doubt she walked past the four flawless gods and placed her garland around the neck of the ordinary, sweating, blinking, wonderfully real man she had wanted all along. The gods, far from being angry, were so charmed by her loving, clear-eyed heart that they blessed the two of them before they returned to the sky.

Nala and Damayanti would face hard and uncertain years together in the time to come. But whatever happened, they always found their way back to one another. Because a love that can tell the real thing from the merely perfect thing is a love that lasts.