One day, Pak Pandir was walking along a small lane on the way home after running an errand for his wife. He came across a piece of feces which was still fresh and warm. Curious of what it was, he decided to scoop it up and have a closer look.

“Hmm, the shape is like feces!” he exclaimed, nodding his head.

“Soft like feces!” he uttered excitedly after fingering it.

“Smell like feces!” he said after putting it near his nose.

Then Pak Pandir put the thing onto his tongue and licked it.

“Definitely it is feces, luckily I didn’t step onto it, thank God!” he laughed happily before going home to his wife.



     But Pak Pandir’s foolishness soon turned tragic. One day, Mak Andih was invited to attend a wedding feast of her relative. She got dressed and before leaving the house, she told her husband to stay home as their infant son was still sleeping soundly in the sarung.

“I have boiled a pot of water on the stove,” she told him. “When the baby wakes up, give him a bath using the water I have just boiled,” she instructed him and left.

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     Soon the baby woke up. Pak Pandir quickly poured the hot water into a tub and put the baby inside. The water was still very hot and as a result, the baby kicked furiously and screamed loudly. Thinking his son loved the water so much and was squeaking from delights, Pak Pandir kept him inside the hot water even longer. Alas, the poor baby eventually died from scalding. When Mak Andih came back from the feast, she asked her husband about their infant son.

“He enjoyed the bath very much and now he went to sleep again,” he told her. When she went to the sarung and tried to wake him up for feeding, she found that he was motionless. In a fury, Mak Andih chased her husband around the house and beat him for his stupidity. Mak Andih was very sad to lose her baby.

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     After evening prayers, both husband and wife wrapped the body with “mengkuang” leaves (a kind of screw pine used for mat-making) and Pak Pandir took the body to bury in the village cemetery. He put it over his shoulder but on the way, the body slipped out and fell onto the ground. Pak Pandir was not aware and walked on without looking back. When he reached the burial ground, he took out a hoe, dug a hole and buried the empty case.

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     Then he walked back home. On the way back, he saw a body on the ground. Thinking it was the dead child of another family because all babies looked the same to him, he ran happily home to tell his wife what he saw.

“Mak Andih, Mak Andih, we are not the only one to lose a baby! Another family also lost theirs! So, it was not something to be sad about!” he tried to comfort his wife.