Once upon a time there lived a poor family in a village at the very edge of the world. And there were two children in this family: a girl about fifteen and a boy about ten. Their father went to work and was almost never at home. The mother stayed with the children. She was busy with the housework. And although the family was poor, they lived happily and amicably, helping each other in everything.
But suddenly grief befell them - their mother died. And soon the father married again.
“Someone needs to look after the children,” he said to the neighbors.
So a stepmother appeared in the house. The children really wanted her to be like their late mother! But that was not the case. No matter how hard they tried, the orphans could not please her. The stepmother was most furious when the father went to work - she forced the unfortunate children to work from dawn to dusk and at the same time beat them and scolded them to the fullest. Sometimes the stepmother would collect a whole pile of dirty laundry and force the boy to do the laundry. And when her father returns, she also complains to him:
– Your children are completely out of hand. “You, they say, are not our own mother, we will not listen to you.” Keep them in check, otherwise I won’t stay in this house anymore.
The father attacked the children with abuse, and they listened to him in silence, swallowing bitter orphan tears, and every time they remembered their kind, caring mother. But they also pitied their father and therefore never contradicted him. Meanwhile, the stepmother became angrier and angrier day by day. And then one day she demanded that the father kick the children out of the house, otherwise, they say, she would leave herself.
The father began to think about what to do: kick out the children or lose his wife. He thought and thought and finally decided to leave his wife and send the children out of sight. So the poor children found themselves on the street without a piece of bread and without a roof over their heads. The sister took her brother by the hand and they walked away from the house.
They walked and walked and finally came to the edge of the forest. Then they sat down to rest, and the sister, in order to calm the baby, began to tell him fairy tales. The children rested a little and set off again. They really wanted to get to some village before dark where they could spend the night. But the further they walked, the denser the forest became. And when they were completely exhausted, they sank to the ground under a spreading banyan tree and immediately fell asleep.
In the middle of the night, the girl woke up and began to think, “Why should we look for the village? Anyway, we have no relatives there, no one to help us. Isn’t it better to stay here in the forest? At least here we won’t die of hunger!” And the brother and sister stayed to live in the forest: they ate berries, took water from the stream, and most importantly, no one beat them or scolded them here.
One day, in a forest clearing, my brother saw a flock of pigeons and wanted to catch one. He made a trap, and soon the dove was caught in it.
The boy brought his catch to his sister and asked her to prepare dinner from the pigeon. When the sister gutted the pigeon, it found seven grains of rice in its crop. The children loosened the ground and threw these grains into it. From seven grains seven stems sprouted. Then the ears appeared, and when they ripened, the children cleared them of grains and hid the grains securely. The next year, in the spring, they dug up a larger area and sowed the grains they had stored. This time they managed to collect even more.
Many years have passed. The children have grown up. The little brother turned into a tall young man. One day he wandered into a village and told the local residents about the rice that he and his sister were growing. The peasants came to the young man, marveled at what they saw, and, having received the seeds as a gift, they went home, happy.
And the next year the residents of that village rejoiced at the rich harvest.
Soon the young man married a modest village girl. My sister didn’t get married and stayed to live with her brother and his wife. So they all lived together until they were very old.
From the words “sa” and “bwa”, which in Burmese means “to begin” and “to increase”, the word “seba” arose - fig. And this word is well known to every resident of Burma.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru