It so happened that once a rich merchant's house was robbed. The merchant suspected that the thief was one of his servants. So he went to Birbal and mentioned the incident. Birbal went to his house and assembled all of his servants and asked that who stole the merchant's things. Everybody denied.
Birbal thought for a moment, then gave a stick of equal length to all the servants of the merchant and said to them that the stick of the real thief will be longer by two inches tomorrow. All the servants should be present here again tomorrow with their sticks.
All the servants went to their homes and gathered again at the same place the next day. Birbal asked them to show him their sticks. One of the servants had his stick shorter by two inches. Birbal said, "This is your thief, merchant."
Later the merchant asked Birbal, "How did you catch him?" Birbal said, "The thief had already cut his stick short by two inches in the night fearing that his stick will be longer by two inches by morning."
Once Emperor Akbar was narrating his dream in the court. The dream began with Akbar and Birbal walking towards each other on a dark night. It was so dark that they could not see each other, and so collided and fell. The Emperor said - "Fortunately for me, I fell into a sea of Paayzam (an Indian sweets made with milk and semolina), but guess what Birbal fell into?" Courtiers asked curiously - "What, Your Majesty?"
"A gutter." The whole court resounded with laughter. The Emperor was thrilled that at least for once he had been able to score over Birbal.
But Birbal was unperturbed. As the laughter had died down, he said - "Your Majesty, Strangely enough, I too had the same dream, but unlike you I slept on till the end. When you climbed out of that pool of delicious Paayazam, and I climbed out of that stinking gutter, we found that there was no water with which to clean ourselves and so guess what we did?" Asked the Emperor - "What did we do, Birbal?" Birbal said smilingly - "We licked each other to clean each other."
The Emperor got red with embarrassment and resolved never to let Birbal down again.