Nasruddin and the Borrowed Pot

One day Mullah Nasruddin knocked on his neighbour’s door to borrow a large cooking pot, for he had a great deal of stew to make. The neighbour, who was rather fond of his fine big pot, lent it a little reluctantly, and made Nasruddin promise to take good care of it.

A few days later Nasruddin returned the pot. But when the neighbour looked inside, he found, sitting in the bottom of his big pot, a second little pot, small and new.

“What is this?” asked the neighbour.

“Ah,” said Nasruddin, with a perfectly straight face. “The most wonderful thing. While your pot was staying at my house, it had a baby. And since the big pot is yours, of course the little one belongs to you as well.”

Now, this was plainly nonsense. Pots do not have babies. But the neighbour wanted that extra little pot, so he decided not to argue. “Why, how marvellous!” he said, and he kept them both, well pleased.

A week or two later, Nasruddin came knocking again, and asked to borrow the big pot a second time. The neighbour, remembering his lovely free baby pot, handed it over at once, this time with a smile.

But the days went by, and the pot did not come back. A week passed. Two weeks. At last the neighbour marched over to Nasruddin’s house and demanded his fine big pot.

Nasruddin met him at the door wearing a face full of sorrow. “Oh, my friend,” he sighed. “I have such sad news. Your poor pot. I am afraid it died.”

“Died!” spluttered the neighbour. “What utter rubbish! A pot cannot die!”

“Can it not?” said Nasruddin gently. “That is strange. You were perfectly happy to believe my pot could have a baby. If a pot is alive enough to be born, surely it is alive enough, one day, to die.”

And the neighbour opened his mouth, and shut it again, for there was really nothing at all he could say to that.