Once upon a time in India, there was an elderly widow who lived with her son. Though the woman worked very hard, as her son grew older, he remained lazy and he accomplished little. One day when the boy was finally old enough, his mother told him it was time for him to leave the village and make something of himself. She packed him four chapatis (flat bread) and sent him on his way.
The boy walked on and on until nightfall, when he reached a wooded area. He sat under a tree and opened the bundle of chapatis that his mother had packed him. As soon as he opened them, however, the smell attracted several nearby houseflies, and they landed on the topmost chapati. Frustrated, the boy slapped his hand on the chapati to try to shoo the flies away. When he lifted his palm, he saw several dead black flies. He began to count: One, two, three…thirty! He had managed to kill thirty houseflies with one strike of his hand!
The next morning, the boy went to a nearby village and boasted to the first person he saw, “Yesterday I killed thirty at once.” Impressed, the person passed it on, and soon word spread around the kingdom of the warrior who had killed thirty men in one blow. He became known as Tees Maar Khan, or “He-Who-Killed-Thirty,” and soon even the king had heard of this feat. Pleased, the king invited Tees Maar Khan to become a head soldier in the army and offered him a house and other luxuries.
For some time, Tees Maar Khan lived comfortably under the king’s provisions. Soon, however, a beat terrorizing the people of a village in the kingdom. When people began to panic, the king commanded his bravest warrior Tees Maar Khan to sort out the problem.
Unable to argue, Tees Maar Khan took some rope and a single mule with him and arrived at the village and arrived just before nighttime, when the beast was most likely to attack. Most people had already retreated into their houses for the night, but Tees Maar Khan found a poor old potter woman moving her pottery and other wares outside her house and onto her covered porch. When Tees Maar Khan asked the woman what she was still doing outside, the woman pointed at the sky, which was filled with dark threatening-looking clouds. “I don’t fear the beast, but I do fear the leak. I’ll be ruined.”
