A fishbone got stuck in Emperor Akbar's throat one day. There were no surgeons yet in the Mughal Empire, and the Court Hakim could not get the bone out. So the stork was brought in.
'Take the bone out,' said Akbar. 'You shall be amply rewarded.' The stork bowed and then put its head between the Emperor's jaws. It took the bone out.
'Get lost,' said the Emperor.
'My reward,' the stork reminded him nervously.
'No creature that has peeded into the throat of the Mughal Emperor has ever taken its head out. I have let you emerge unscathed, what reward can be greater than your own head?'
There was little that a stork could do against an Emperor, but wht made it feel even more wretched was that the whole story was lifted from Aesop's Fables.
O.V.Vijayan, Selected Fiction, Penguin Books, 1999
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