Jajong Kadoram

A woman, pestle and the sky

In the olden days, the sun, the moon and the stars were not so far away from the Earth.

The saying goes that one evening, a woman had taken out a mortar and pestle to husk the rice. Each time she would lift the pestle, it would hit the sky.

The woman started striking hard against the sky in anger and thus, the sky flew far away from the surface.

Boy and the moon

There is another A’chik tale attached to the moon, this time about how people tried to get the moon back down to Earth.

On a full moon night, a mother and a father were sitting outside with their young son, gazing at the bright moon. The son wanted to play with the moon and asked the father to bring it down.

The little kid’s parents tried to convince him that it was impossible, but he was unwilling to listen to them. He even started throwing tantrums; the parents were deeply saddened.

Hearing his loud cries, the neighbours also came out to console him. The child was inconsolable.

The mother and father loved their child so much that they devised a plan to pluck the moon from the sky. They would make a bridge of ladders to get to the moon.

So, they started making ladders out of wood and tied the first one to a sturdy jackfruit tree.

Ladder upon ladder, the father started climbing the makeshift bridge and reached a point where the people below could no longer see him.

After climbing high up, the father only needed one more ladder to reach the moon. He called out to the people on earth, “I need only one more ladder. Please, send it up fast!”

Because he was so high up, the people down on Earth could only hear whispers of his words. They believed that he had reached the moon and was asking them to cut down the bridge of ladders.

They cut it; man and bridge came crashing down to Earth.

The legend

The place still exists near the village of Chotipara in the Goalpara district. Traces of the wooden ladders which have turned to stone can still be found.