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The Palmless Wrestler
maximum efforts to become a wrestler, a good gymnast, a strong person physically and mentally so that he could teach a proper lesson to those who would ever under-estimate him. Even the wrestlers would keep away from him.
He realised that to become a wrestler, one has to undergo regular physical exercises. He started doing them at home without anybody's knowledge.
His name was Padmaraj.
One day while he was training, his brother-in-law spotted him and got angry. The brother-in-law asked Padmaraj to go to a gymnasium instead, where adequate facilities were available to become a wrestler. One could not become a wrestler practising at home according to his brother-in-law.
Padmaraj expressed his inability to go to a gymnasium because his father was strongly against it. Once his father had said that since Padmaraj did not have palms, he would not be able to become a wrestler and that he should give up the whole idea. His father in the heat of his anger had also said that those who take to physical exercises gradually become mentally and intellectually weak and they finally turn dullards. And if this really happened to Padmaraj as it surely would, he would not be able to do anything to earn his livelihood, said his father.
Hearing all this from Padmaraj, his brother-in-law had a hearty laugh. Nevertheless, he said to Padmaraj that all that his father had said was not really true and nothing of the kind had happened to him although he (the brother-in-law) too undertook physical exercises every day as a matter of routine. He also asked Padmaraj not to be afraid of his father and that he would persuade his father-in-law to change his mind. He then asked Padmaraj to accompany him to the gymnasium every day if he really wanted to be a wrestler.
With what his brother-in-law had told him, Padmaraj
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