The priest and the three hooligans

After performing a religious ceremony, a priest was returning home quite late at night. It was very dark. He had received a large sum of money from the people who had asked him to perform the ceremony. Also, someone had given him a golden necklace, which he was wearing around his neck.

All of a sudden he was surrounded by three hooligans who shouted, “What have you got?” When they saw the necklace, they started strangling the priest and taking away the necklace. It was very easy for the three of them to take the necklace away from the poor priest.

The priest said, “Wait! You can have my necklace, but why do you have to strangle me? Why do you have to kill me? I am not resisting.”

When they stopped strangling him he said, “This necklace is just stolen loot anyway. I am giving it to you cheerfully. I am not begging you to let me keep it. You are so strong. The best thing is for you to just take it.

“I don’t feel sorry because somebody just gave this to me while I was coming back from my puja ceremony. I saw three or four people like you who had just stolen some things. They were showing what they had stolen to each other. As soon as they saw me, they said, ‘Don’t bother us. If you tell anybody that you have seen us, we shall kill you’. So I said, ‘I am not going to tell anybody’.

“They thought that I was going to send the village chief, who would bring guards and arrest them. So they threw this necklace at me to make me keep quiet.

“Now I am going home. You can have the necklace.”

The hooligans asked, “Where are these people with all the stolen things?”

The priest said, “They are straight ahead. They have very beautiful, expensive things. You perhaps cannot even imagine so much wealth!”

The hooligans said, “We are much stronger than they are. We will go and attack them.

The priest said, “I see that you people are much stronger.”

Then, out of joy and gratitude, the hooligans threw the necklace which they had just taken from the priest back at him.