"A mother used to carry her son on her shoulder, when she went to the market. A woman with a basket of fruits passed by her; the child lifted a banana from that basket and started eating it.

The mother noticed it, and when she was told that he had cleverly lifted it from the basket of a passing fruitseller, she complimented the son on his smartness.

This made the child indulge in petty thieving and picking pockets, as it grew into a boy - and in actual house-breaking and dacoity. Once during a dacoity, he committed even murder, and when he was caught and jailed, he expressed a wish to see his mother before being hanged.

The wailing, weeping desperate mother was brought before him. She was sobbing at her son's fate.

The son asked her to come closer to him; suddenly, he tried to strangle her, and the guards separated them.

The son said, "She deserves the punishment; for, it was she who brought me to this doom. Had she reprimanded me when I stole a banana, when I was a child of two years, instead of complimenting me, I would not have fallen into this, evil way"."