Once a merchant came to the King's court and offered him many gifts. Among them was a bag of carrots. Carrot was a new vegetable in that place and had not been seen before. The palace chef made every recipe with a dash of carrot. Carrots took a special place in the dinner that day, and was very delicious.
Tasting carrot for the first time, the King was overjoyed. ‘There is no better vegetable than carrots in the creation of God’, said the King. Mullah Nasruddin, seated next to him, said, ‘Yes master, carrots are the most wonderful vegetable I have ever seen.’ The King was so pleased with the vegetable that no day would pass without a dish with carrots. Almost every dish would have carrot in one form or another. Days passed. The King eventually tired of carrots and began to dislike them. One day he snapped on on seeing carrots served at the table. He shouted to the assistants, ‘Take it away! This is not a vegetable worth serving here.’ Saying this he turned to Mullah.
Now Mullah told the King, ‘Yes master, this is the worst vegetable, it is not even fit to be called as a vegetable.’ The King thought for a while and said, ‘Mullah the other day you were praising this vegetable a lot. How come today you are talking against it?’ Mullah humbly said, ‘Master, you are right. But I am your servant and not the servant of the carrot.’
Moral: As servants of Allah, we should like what He allows, and dislike whatever He prohibits. Afterall, we are His slaves, not the slaves of anything or anyone else.
The Story of the Carrots
