A pandit crossing a field felt that there was something in his mouth and spat it out. It turned out to be a bird's feather. He could not understand how it had got into his mouth and it perplexed him a great deal. When he reached home he told his wife about it but asked her not to tell anyone lest somebody put a bad interpretation on it.
His wife was even more intrigued by the strange occurrence and felt the need to confide in someone. So she swore her neighbour to secrecy and told her what had happened.
Her neighbour got the impression that several feathers had come out of the pandit's mouth. She was shocked. However, she assured the woman that such things could happen and advised her not to worry about it.
"My lips are sealed," said the woman. But she was longing to tell someone and when she saw the dhobi's wife going past, called her in and told her the whole story. Only, she made it sound as if a whole bird had come out of the pandit's mouth.
"Never have I heard of such a thing," said the dhobi's wife, her eyes popping with excitement, "and he being a vegetarian and all that, but one can never tell..." She went away promising not to tell anyone but on the way she met her friend and the whole story tumbled out of her mouth.
The story spread, "flocks of birds" have come out of the pandit’s mouth. By evening the whole village and several other neighbouring villages also had heard the story and people began to arrive in droves at the pandit's house to witness the miraculous happenings there. Nobody would believe him and everybody begged him to demonstrate his wonderful power of producing birds from his mouth. Finally in exasperation, he asked them all to sit in front of his house and when they had done so, ran out of the back and hid in the jungle.
