The Gatiloke — Part 20 of 23

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Gatiloke — Part 20 of 23 (The Two Otters Who Parted Ways to Find Food · The Man Who Died and Was Reborn as a Golden Hamsa · The Man Who Kept a Hen · The Brahmin Monkey and His Wife · The Wife Who Deceived Her Husband without His Knowing) The Gatiloke's tenth part opens with five tales. Two otters quarrel over a fish, and two judges — a jackal, then a tiger-fish with his scales — divide it until nothing is left but bones. A brahmin reborn as a golden hamsa feeds his poor family feather by feather, until his wife's greed plucks him bare in one summary act and the feathers turn white. A man who wants all his hen's eggs at once squeezes her, and in one summary clause the eggs break and the hen dies. A brahmin monkey's wife takes a lover of her own kind by the false-nephew device, stated in summary only, and runs away with his goods. And a wife who sleeps with a lover at the fence shelter, in summary only, turns her father-in-law's evidence back upon him and is believed. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. The episode opens and closes with "Gangster Piano Symphony" as its theme, heard also briefly between the stories. "Santa Fe Springs" plays as a quiet background bed under the reading. Narrated by Madame de Pamplemousse. Chapters: 01:32 — The Two Otters Who Parted Ways to Find Food 09:43 — The Man Who Died and Was Reborn as a Golden Hamsa 15:17 — The Man Who Kept a Hen 18:43 — The Brahmin Monkey Who Got a Female Monkey as His Wife 29:00 — The Wife Who Deceived Her Husband without His Knowing From the Gatiloke by Suttantaprija Ind (1859–1924), Cambodia's treasury of Khmer folk tales, first published in parts in Phnom Penh in 1914–1921 — public domain, and told here in a fresh in-house English rendering made from the Khmer text, in the book's own order. Earlier holds stand as recorded in the collection's written register and in the descriptions of Parts 1–19: the question-chapter of the rascal who should be feared; Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher; the Singha-To who wanted the chief's daughter; the crocodile and the cart-driver; the hunter and the parrot; the fable of the old woman whom desire unmade; the abbot and his two students; the deer, the crow and the jackal; the jackal and the elephant; the lion and the frog; the rabbit and the tigress; and the goatherd boy — each held under house rule until ruled on by name. One further tale of the sixth part is held: the village cat and the chap-puk bird, a killing and an eating in the open scene, twice over. Two tales at the close of the seventh part are likewise held: the lion who loved a cow, a poisoning plotted and done; and the monkey and the great hermit, a sexual act done by guile on an unwilling other, as the tale's whole engine. Three tales of the eighth part are likewise held: the servant who killed the watch-crowing rooster, a killing plotted in thought and done in secret, as the tale's whole engine; the couple who kept a ska, a child dead by a snake's bite and a faithful creature struck down in anger, as the tale's climax; and the bear and the pongro tree, a killing directed by one and done by another's axe, as the tale's close. Three tales of the tenth part are held: the jackal who knew the mantra and led the animal army to seize Varanasi, whose close is the whole army struck dead by the lion's roar; Nandaka the ogre, killed by Vishnu's discus in the open close; and the shipmaster's wife, a lover stabbed through the throat in the open scene, as the tale's pivot. Three items stand as gaps in the transcription, their collation still owed and passed in their place: the man who knew how to play the gong, in the seventh part; Chao Vaen, who went to buy spectacles, in the eighth; and the animal army's march