Once a king was passing through a forest with his henchmen on a hunting expedition.
There was no game in sight, so they slowly entered a dense forest in search of animals.
Not far into the forest, they saw they found a bandits’ hideout. As they got nearer to the hut, a parrot sitting on a nearby tree said; “Hold on, hold on, a king is coming. He has a lot of goods. Loot on, loot on, come quickly, come quickly.”
Hearing the parrot’s voice, all the bandits ran towards the king. Seeing the robbers coming towards them, the king and his soldiers ran away. They ran for miles and saw a big tree. As soon as they got near the tree to rest for some time, they saw another parrot sitting on the tree. The parrot said; “Come Rajan, you are welcome to our Sadhu Mahatma’s hut. Come inside, drink water and rest. Hearing this from the parrot, the king was surprised and started thinking how can the behaviour of two creatures of the same species be so different. The king could not understand the sudden change of behaviour of the parrot. He however believed the bird and went inside the Sadhu’s hut. He bowed to the Sadhu-Mahatma and sat near him. He told him the whole story and then softly asked, ‘Rishivar, why is there so much difference in the behaviour of these two parrots?’
The sage listened to everything patiently and said, ‘It is nothing Rajan, it is just the effect of company. By living with the robbers, the parrot has also started behaving like the robbers and speaking their language. That is, a person becomes like the environment in which he lives. What I mean to say is that even a fool becomes a scholar by living with scholars and if a scholar lives in the company of fools, then foolishness also comes into him. Therefore, we should choose company after careful consideration.