Price

Posted on Sun Jun 24 2018

Yet another short story, I remembered this evening.

The Story

Once there was a teacher who used to make mud toys. He also had one student, who was learning this art from him. Both used to make mud toys and sell them in market. This is how they made their living.

There was an interesting thing about this student teacher pair. Every toy that teacher used to sell was priced at ₹5, on other hand toys made by his student used to fetch much more price.

Student kept training under his teacher and teacher guided him at every step. Teacher regularly found many irregularities in his student's toys and he used to ask his student to fix them.

Some time passed, now student started to make even better toys. He was regularly fetching ₹10, ₹20 even more. His teacher will still correct his mistakes and ask him to be more careful with toys he made.

Now toys made by student were selling at ₹25 but at same time teacher's toys were still fixed at ₹5. But teacher still regularly instructed student to be more careful.

One day student got frustrated with constant instructions from his teacher and asked him why he is constantly finding mistakes in his work, is his master jealous of the fact that his student's toys were selling at ₹25 but his own were still fixed at ₹5.

Hearing this, his teacher smiled. He told his student, a long time ago I too asked this same question to my master. After that my toys never fetched more than ₹5, Now your toys will never fetch more than ₹25.

Just like my own teacher I was only trying to improve you, but you mistook that for jealousy.