The story is a old fashioned one from India which I later found out there are a lot of fairytale stories with crabs in them from India. I did a lot of research on the meaning of fairy tales and how they came about.
This story is about a old woman and man never having a child and how they longed for one and then when the man went out for dinner he discovered that something was alive inside a gourd/ pumpkin. Both the man and woman opened it gently and there was a crab inside who spoke to them so they took him as their son. They fooled the neighbours that the woman was pregnant and then when it was ready explained that the woman had given birth to a crab!
They believed anything in those days.
After the crab had "grown up" the woman and man( the crab's parents) went to find him a wife,a human wife. And she was very angry at finding out she was married to a crab.
I think the girl must have been forced by her family to marry such creature if there was money involved, as anyone in those days would marry for money.
As the wife of the crab hated her husband she sneaked out in the night to find a new man, a real man.
The crab followed her to spy on her and amazingly so he got to a Banyan tree which fell down on the crabs orders and changed him into a man!
His wife was unaware it was him and she flirted with the man the crab had changed into who was aparantly very handsome to his wife. She gave him her ornaments when he insisted he had to go, and he made his way back to the tree and changed back into a crab.
At home the wife was angry again at being with a crab, and she saw that he had her ornaments that she gave to the handsome man she met in the night! she was outraged and very confused how he had them.
So the next night she sneaked out again but waited for him to follow her.
She witnessed the crab changing into the man she longed for and that the crab body was left under the tree.
As soon as the man walked off, the girl went to the tree and burnt the crab body then hid behind the tree to await her husband. Then they lived happily ever after
The problem I thought was that it was a bit odd how after burning the crab he would be happy as a man, or why wouldn't he have stayed a man before.
So after reading a lot about fairytales I adapted this one slightly to give a bit of mystery.
First I thought the wife would smash the crab body to pieces rather then burn it as it would be a lot quicker this way.
And I changed the ending so that she was left waiting for her man to come back, and you weren't sure if she had killed the crab and the man by smashing him up or that he was to come back.
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