The royal painter had decorated the palace walls with Ramayana murals.
Tenalirama scoffed. "Where's the rest of Rama?" he asked, pointing to one figure.
"That's a profile!" the painter explained. "You have to imagine the rest."
"I can do better than that!" declared Tenalirama. "I will paint the walls with Mahabharata murals!"
When the king came to see Tenalirama's paintings, the walls were covered with noses. Nothing but noses!
"What is this?" he shouted angrily.
"Well, this is Yudhishhtira, of course. This is Arjuna. Here's Draupadi..." Tenalirama pointed out each nose one by one. "You have to imagine the rest."
Inspired by: "Tenali Rama the Painter" in A Twist in the Tale by Aditi De, 2005.
Notes: Tenali Rama was a poet and jester in the court of King Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire, circa 1500; find out more at Wikipedia. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the two great epics of ancient India. In Aditi De's version, the story is about Ramayana figures and also about a cow in the grass; I made it a story about the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
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