The Blind Musician and the Elephant (My Retelling of a Classic Tale)

Interviewer, "What is the strangest question you have ever been asked?"
Jon Scieszka, children's book author, "A little guy sitting in the front row at a school I visited asked me where I get my shoes. At first I thought he was probably from another planet or something. Then I realized that from where he was sitting, my shoes were about all he could see of the presentation."
- Author Talk, edited by Leonard S. Marcus



Before the season of rains that year, an elephant wandered into a small village near Takh in Kashmir where lived eight blind men. A young boy ran about shouting, "Elephant! An elephant is come to our village!"

The blind men rushed and stumbled out of their huts like night bats streaming sightless from a cave. For none of them had never met an elephant before, and they wondered what it was.

The elephant made his way along their street to the watering hole they kept for their sheep and goats. Here, under the leafy trees, he stopped to take a long drink and hide from the unkind, afternoon sun.

The men each approached the resting giant.

"Ah! The great beast of our storyteller's tales," thought the first one. He grabbed hold of the beast's tail, thought a moment, then declared, "An elephant is quite a rope."

The second, an old man, put his hands on the creature's side and pushed. "An elephant is exactly a rubber wall. I had wondered all my life; finally I know."

Another ran his hands around the elephant's leg like a potter, "He is an unusual animal, akin to tree trunks."

The youngest of the group came next and touched the the elephant's tusk and its point. He said, "No, you are all wrong. I don't know where you get your ideas from, elephants are like spears."

The fifth, a scholar of sorts, grabbed the wet trunk which wiggled in his hands. He said, "It is obvious that the elephant beast is a nonvenomous snake, a thick one, most likely in close relation to the genus Python."

The sixth man heard all the different opinions and wanted to judge for himself. He went up to the elephant's mouth and felt the animal's large wet tongue. "You are all wrong, an elephant is some sort of large, wet fruit. I have a cold today so I can't smell which one, perhaps a seedless watermelon?"

The seventh man walked up to the elephant and ran his palms along the it's ear. "This is not a beast at all, nor a fruit, nor any of that nonsense. It is a large leafed, dusty plant. Someone should water it."

The last blind man was a musician, he went up to the elephant and by chance touched the length of the elephant's tusk. He strummed his fingers on it. "Ah, this I am sure of," he said to the others, "An elephant is a piano. But it must be broken because no sound comes out when I play it's worn, ivory keys."

"How sad," he added, "I heard a trumpet just a few minutes ago. It would have been fun to play along with the trumpeter on this piano. He's put me in the mood for a bit of jazz."