How much land does a man need ?

                                  How much land       does a man need ?


              Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy ( 1828 – 1910 ) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works , “The novels war”and “peace and Anna Karenina” are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and pinnacle of realist fiction. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical person and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

* Pakhom jeopardizes losing everything because of more greed.
        This particular story revolves around the charactor name Pakhom and his greed. It revolves around the theme of leading to your own demise. Two sisters are talking to each other from which one resides in the town where as the other in the village. The one who state in the village is the wife of Pakhom and she seemed to be happy and contended with her life. But her husband is dissatisfied with his life. Finally he dicides to buy some land and saw the seeds in his own land and reap the benefits. After some time when he starts earning good, he wants more. Then once he meet with a peasant , that Peasant talked about the land which is very cheap as good as dirt cheap near Volga. Pakhom gets interested in going there and buying some land for his own.

            The land that the visitor was talking about belong to the Bashkirs. They were very kind hearted people who would give him as much land as he wants and all they expected was good gifts is return. Pakhom finally decides to go there along with his family and decides to buy some gifts for Bashkirs. He and his family reach their where in they meet the Bashkirs and flood them with a lot of gifts. All of them are very happy and they decide to gave land as much as he wants. Chief agrees for the deal and tells him to start walking. The land that he might cover before the sunset would be signed under the deed. The end of the story becomes very tragic as Pakhom tries to over rich and causes his own demise.

                  The moral of the story is that one should not be to ambitious and dissatisfied with whatever one. Containment is what is required to be happy. The story is in a way didactic in nature and shows that exstive desire may lead to one's own down fall.

                               “ Lalach buri bala hai”

                             “ Santosi nar sada sukhi”.