Story of A King Who Was Defeated By A Grain of Rice

Long time back, there was a king in India who was very proud of his wealth and power. He wanted to use these riches for the welfare of people in his kingdom. He had a rule that if someone comes to his court with a wish, he will grant it no matter what the wish was. He was confident that with the amount of wealth he has, there is nothing in this material world that is beyond his reach.

Everyday, people would come to his court asking for whatever they needed. Some would ask for a house, the King would grant their wish and construct a house for them. Some would ask for food, the king would grant their wish and give them enough food the person can eat in their entire lifetime. Many days passed, and the people of the kingdom were very happy with the kindness of the king. With each passing day, the king became more and more proud about his wealth. He started believing that nothing is beyond the reach of his mighty power.

One day a person came to the king’s court. He looked neither rich nor poor. He wore simple and clean white dhoti wrapped around his body. He wanted something from the king but his wish was not usual. To explain his wish, he brought a chess board with himself. A chessboard is a square board with 64 square pieces on it, arranged in a 8x8 fashion. 

What the man wanted was that the king place just 1 grain of rice on the 1st square block which is on the bottom left corner of the board. The king was surprised and confirmed if he was just asking for 1 grain of rice. The man nodded and went ahead with the next part of his request. He wanted the king to place 2 grains of rice on the 2nd block. On the 3rd block, the king should put double the number of grains on the 2nd block. So the 3rd block will have 4 grains of rice. He wanted this to continue until the 64th block of the chess board. Basically, the king should keep doubling the number of grains 64 times. He wanted the king to give him all the grains of rice that are placed on the last 64th block. 

The king was taken aback at this unusual wish, but he thought that this is a very easy wish to fulfil. The man started with just 1 grain of rice, after all how much it can be after doubling it 64 times, maybe a few kilograms of rice. After all, he has enough rice to feed his entire kingdom for many lifetimes. So he promised the man to fulfil his wish.

The king did not realise that what he has promised is beyond the reach of anyone. There is not enough rice in this whole world to fulfil the wish of this man. By the time the king reached the 30th block, leave alone reaching the 64th block.

If you do not believe me, let us do some simple calculations. At the 64th block, there is supposed to be 2^64 grains of rice. Assuming a grain of rice weighs 0.01 grams, this roughly translates to 10 billion tons of rice. Even in today’s world, the whole world produces 0.5 billion tons of rice in a year. What the man asked from the king was more rice than what is available on the earth.

Where did the king go wrong ? I do not blame the king here. It is unnatural for us humans to imagine the power of exponential growth. Even many of us would find it hard to believe that how much 1 grain of rice can grow in just 64 steps if it is doubled every step. This is an example of exponential growth. We humans are capable of imagining linear or quadratic growth, but when it comes to something growing 2 times on every step, we fail to imagine how fast it can grow just after a few steps.

In our day to day lives, we should aim to invest in activities which have the property of exponential growth. In such activities, we can reach great heights even with low investment. All we need is consistent work on it, and with some steps of time, the results will be huge. Some examples of such activities are: Learning by going deep into a particular domain like coding, building muscles by going to gym daily, trading or investing in stock markets. You do not need to invest a lot of time each day. You just need to invest a small amount of time daily over years. The results look small in the starting, but small small results add up over time. After a few years, you get to see the power of exponential growth.