Aesop's fables - Retold by Risitha Deelaka Wickmal

Some things cannot be changed....!

Once an aristocrat who was also a philanthropist bought a slave from his master, not to get work done by him, but out of sympathy. He thought that the little slave boy should be given a luxury life.

The aristocrat was worried that the slave boy was ill-treated. He thought that the reason for the boy's darker complexion due to his previous master's negligence.

He went to beauty parlours and bought expensive fairness creams and soaps to retrieve the skin colour of the boy. He cleaned up and scrubbed the boy's body using all expensive cosmetics but to no avail.

He couldn't notice even a slightest change in the boy's complexion. Having failed in all attempts to making the African boy fair, finally the aristocrat got tired of that and gave up.

Moral of the story

There is a Sinhalese saying that the nature of the crooked tail of a dog cannot be straightened by inserting it into a bamboo. Even if you put charcoal into a pot of milk, the colour of the charcoal would not change.

Thus the nature of the human being cannot be changed. Even if someone tries to change , they remain intact. A person's nature is unique to that person. Trying to change that is just like drawing pigs to pretty market.