In a certain village, there lived a very straightforward, courageous man called Chhura. His best friend was his brother Nahaia, alias Naa, who was cunning enough in all respects to take advantage of Chhura’s ignorance and stupidity.

As was the practice of the day, both brothers were jhum farmers. Their paddy fields lay adjacent to each other a fair distance away from the village. At the bottom of Naa’s plot, stood a big hollow tree where many birds would roost. Naa could not tolerate them and would often throw stones at them. At times, he would hunt them down with a catapult or sairawkherh.

One day, the stones hit the hollow of the tree occupied by a Phungpuinu¹. She was enraged and threatened to take revenge by using her supernatural powers. She chanted unintelligible words which scared Naa out of his wits. He then decided that if the field could change hands, all harm would fall upon the new owner and he would be free from danger.

A long, long time ago, there was a poor little boy in a village by a river. His name was Rairahtea. He lived with his stepmother who was very cruel to him and always made him do the hardest of work.

One day, all the boats on the river near his village were stranded in water and unable to sail. The sailors had never had any major problem because they had a bahhnukte, an axe which had magical powers. But it had now been stolen by a python so the sailors, helpless without their magic axe, decided to offer a human sacrifice. When Rairahtea's stepmother heard of this, she sold him to the sailors in return for a bowl of money.

Rairahtea stayed with the sailors and guarded their stores of rice. One day, as he was on duty, a python suddenly crawled towards him. It was the same python which had stolen the sailors' magic axe and was running away from them.

“Stop them, stop them, somebody!” hollered the old woman as she came hurrying up the road. A group of noisy children were standing in an excited huddle around what was obviously a spectacle of no mean entertainment. At a child’s wary cry of “Rema’s grandma!” the group broke apart sharply, every child casting cautious eyes around as to which direction the old lady might be approaching. As the tight circle loosened, the source of their entertainment became plainly visible.

A girl of about 13 years of age was tugging on the hair of a boy, yanking it so hard that he stood bent low before her as she rained thumps on his back. With his face only inches away from the ground, the boy was valiantly flailing his arms around but since he couldn’t see much from his disadvantaged position, it wasn’t of much help. The old woman was upon them now and in a loudly scolding voice, pulled apart the two deadlocked combatants.

The boy straightened up, his hair standing in a shock in the upward and forward directions of the yanking it had received, his mouth set in a pugnacious scowl. With the air of a victorious military general returning home in great triumph, he glanced around in the silence that followed. His opponent too stood, feet still aggressively set apart, and for a moment there was complete silence. The first sound that broke the void was not of human voices but something quite different. A resounding smack sounded on the back of the boy’s head, followed by a loud thwack on his back. “Lalremthang, how many times do you need to be told not to get into a fight? You just cannot learn!” As she scolded, his grandmother raised a threatening fist again and the boy threw up his hands in puny self-defence. His grandmother still hit him anyway but the blow that fell was a considerably softer one.