A beggar keeps accounts and demands interest. Tenali posts the ledger on a temple wall—then balances it with names.
He was diligent and unbearable, the only mendicant with receipts. “You gave two coppers last week,” he’d say. “Return with interest.” Merchants avoided his corner; compassion soured to arithmetic.
Tenali borrowed the ledger and nailed it to the temple wall. “Public books for public claims,” he announced. The pages fluttered; the town gathered. Names marched in careful ink: who gave, when, and how loudly.
Within a week, donors began writing notes beside their entries: “Paid with prayer,” “Paid with rice,” “Paid in silence.” A widow wrote, “Paid when my sorrow allowed.” The beggar read his own history and felt suddenly rich and wrong.
He returned the next day with an empty bowl and a small bow. “I will ask,” he said. “You may give.”
Tenali left the ledger where it was, a mirror no one resented. People liked how their names looked next to kindness better than they had liked the beggar’s math.
By festival season, the bowl filled without prompting. Interest, it seemed, accrues fastest to dignity.
