The grey hair

Once a middle-aged lady was scolding her daughter severely. She was saying, “Is there any day when you listen to me? I have never seen anybody on earth as disobedient as you are. All the time you are moving around with your boyfriend and misbehaving. You are making my life miserable. Each time you disobey me, I get new grey hairs.”

The daughter said, “Now I know why my grandmother’s hair is all grey!”

The mother said, “What do you mean?”

The daughter replied, “It is because you were so ‘obedient’. That is why my grandmother’s hair is so grey!”

The mother became furious and wanted to strike her daughter for her insolence. The mother said, “Stop, stop your foul tongue or I will strike you.”

The daughter boasted, “I am stronger than you. You will not be able to touch me.” The girl was really much stronger than her mother, so the mother could not carry out her threat.

The mother went on, “You are such a bad girl. Now I am telling you why my mother has all grey hair. It is because my brother was very, very disobedient. It was all due to my brother that this happened.”

The young girl went to her maternal uncle — her mother’s brother — and said to him, “Is it true that you are such a bad person? It seems to me that you are a very good person, but my mother claims you used to be so disobedient. You used to torture my grandmother. All her grey hair is due to you. My mother says so.”

Her uncle said, “Your mother is saying that?”

Then he went and challenged his sister. He said, “You liar! You can ask the neighbours what kind of boyfriends you had. I did not have any girlfriends. When the proper time came, I was married according to our parents’ wishes. I was not like you. You had so many boyfriends.”

Then the mother and her brother had a huge fight. Who was telling the truth, the mother or the brother? Finally the mother said to her daughter, “There is only one person who can tell the truth, and that is your grandfather. Let us go and see your grandfather. He will tell us the truth.”

When the daughter asked her grandfather, he said, “Your grandmother got grey hair because it is hereditary. I am your grandfather, but I do not have grey hair. I have all dark, black hair, but she has grey hair because she inherited it from her father’s side. Her mother did not have grey hair.”

The grandmother said, “No, it is all lies. Now I shall tell you all the real reason. Your grandfather did not listen to me. He led a very bad life. He would come home late. Only God knew what was going on. It is all because of your grandfather’s bad life that I have grey hair. I used to worry and worry, about him for hours and hours. It is from his bad life that I got all this grey hair!”