ராஜா காது கழுதை காது

I was reminded of an incident from an old Tamil movie, when I was rereading my recent blog entry on the famous scientist Lise Meitner. The part I was rereading was this:

Lise Meitner makes a remarkable interpretation of someone else's experimental results. She tells Neils Bohr about it. He was about to leave for a trip to the U.S. He agrees to keep his mouth shut about this major discovery until Meitner's paper in Nature is published (which she has already sent off). So far, so good. However, someone called Rosenfeld is also in on the secret. He was also traveling with Bohr to the U.S. Nobody thinks that it is necessary to ask him also to keep quiet. Since this is such a humongous discovery, as soon as he lands in the U.S., he blabs to everybody. Dozens of labs repeat the experiment and confirm it, almost overnight.

The movie scene goes something like this:

The ears of the king of a certain country somehow become donkey's ears. (I think that the king was played by Nambiar.) The king's barber comes to know about this. The news is so humongous that he has to tell somebody. His wife suggests that he dig a whole in the ground and tell the secret to the hole. He does so and then covers the hole with mud. [He is not the first man who got into big trouble after listening to his wife ] A tree grows in that spot. They make a drum out of that tree's wood. A music troupe takes the drum to the palace for use during a concert before the king. During the concert, a drummer lightly taps on one side of the drum. It responds

"ராஜா".

He then taps on the other side of the drum and it responds

"காது".

The response to the next tap is

"கழுதை".

And the response to the last tap is

"காது".

The whole kingdom comes to know about the secret.

 

> What happened to 'My Fair Lady' -Saraiyu?

Possibly this weekend. I need to be in the right mood for it.
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Sriniketan: Thanks for your comment. I liked the following quote on your IL page:

"Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want."

I have a lot of experience