Hey.
Stories have a way of getting into us, at all ages. They make us laugh, wonder, cry, get angry, ridicule the stories. They give us enjoyable intellectual stimulation and emotional sustenance at different times. We do understand that they are imaginary people, places, and situations; so, how does this not make its moral/ethical codes of conduct or their cultural epistemology not imaginary? How is it that we-their readers/listeners-- take them so very seriously? Perhaps, they choose their method of influencing us. The stories are, to put it in a literary 'technical' language, the very 'figures of speech' of our everyday life. The storyteller transforms her/his everyday life experiences, giving that abstract, airy-nothing experiences a form--a physical form--as in literary genre and characters in the story.
Little wonder that the stories cast their spell on 'adults' who comprehend that stories are imaginary narratives. We believe in them--be it in cinemas, daily soaps on television or in serious literature. At each stage of our life, there's a story that appeals to us and there's a person whom we model ourselves after, remains in our mind--etched forever. That's how epics--perhaps the greatest myths we have told ourselves, about ourselves-continue to entertain us and we hold on to them. But, they make us what we are today. We model ourselves after the people in the stories, identify the qualities of the animals in people, the demigods in the myths--they become integral to our identity of who we are as people and our belief in the choices we make in the course of life.
Folk tales are my personal favorites. I was fascinated by the folk tales as a child and I continue to be enthralled by it even today. For one thing, they are so fluid-like the rivers that flow. Like the proverb that says you never step into the same water, folk tales never remain the same; yet, even as they change, their narrative is the same. And, unlike many other forms of stories, it is not judgmental, no morals are thrust on the listener. But, the ethical aspects are central to these tales. Most fascinating is the creative-imaginative space it offers the storyteller. If one has noticed, most folk tales have this for the beginning: "Once upon a time, there lived a king . . . " or " In a village, there lived an old woman . . . ". And mostly end with "everyone went home and shared the story with . . . ". And so is born the various versions of folk tales.
A K Ramanujan, the folklorist and academician, collected folktales from different places. He has a delightful collection of tales collected from different regions and languages. One such story is about how a story and a song is born. This tale titled 'A Song and a Story' is as much about the independence of the story and the song as much as it is about the dependence of the teller on the tales.
Tell me a story... from The Flowering Tree by A K Ramanujan
A housewife knew a story. She also knew a song. But she kept them to herself, never told anyone the story or sang the song. Imprisoned within her, the story and the song were feeling choked. They wanted to release, wanted to run away. One day, when the woman was sleeping with her mouth open, the story escaped, fell out of her, took the shape of a pair of shoes, and sat outside the house. The song also escaped, took the shape of something like a man’s coat, and hung on a peg.
The woman’s husband came home, looked at the coat and shoes, and asked her, “Who’s visiting?”
“No one,” she said.
“But whose coat and shoes are these?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
He wasn’t satisfied with her answer. He was suspicious. Their conversation was unpleasant. The unpleasantness led to a quarrel. The husband flew into a rage, picked up his blanket, and went to the Monkey God’s temple to sleep.
The woman didn’t understand what was happening. She lay down alone that night. She asked the same question over and over: “Whose coat and shoes are these?” Baffled and unhappy, she put out the lamp and went to sleep.
All the lamp flames of the town, once they were put out, used to come to the Monkey God’s temple and spend the night there, gossiping. On this night, all the lamps of all the houses were represented there—all except one, which came late.
The others asked the latecomer, “Why are you so late tonight?”
“At our house, the couple quarrelled late into the night,” said the flame.
“Why did they quarrel?”
“When the husband wasn’t home, a pair of shoes came onto the verandah, and a man’s coat somehow got onto a peg. The husband asked her whose they were. The wife said she didn’t know. So they quarrelled.”
“Where did the coat and shoes come from?”
“The lady of our house,” said the flame, “knows a story and a song. She never tells the story and has never sung the song to anyone. The story and the song got suffocated inside; so they got out and have turned into a coat and a pair of shoes. They took revenge. The woman doesn’t even know.”
The husband, lying under his blanket in the temple, heard the lamp’s explanation. His suspicions were cleared. When he went home, it was dawn. He asked his wife about her story and her song. But she had forgotten them. “What story, what song?” she said.
Girish Karand employs the tale, with a little twist, to introduce the complex theme of gender, of Nagamandala which also is the conceptual framework of the fertility myth, of gender conflict in the play.
(ಈ ಕಥೆಯನ್ನು ಕಾರ್ನಾಡರು ನಾಗಮಂಡಲ ನಾಟಕದ ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹೇಳುತ್ತಾರೆ.) "ನಮ್ಮ ಮನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಇರುವವರಿಬ್ಬರೆ--ಮುದುಕ, ಮುದುಕಿ. ಈ ಹೊತ್ತು ಮುದುಕಿ ಊಟ ಮುಗಿಸಿ, ನೆಲ ಸಾರಿಸಿ, ಪಾತ್ರೆ ತೊಳೆದಿಟ್ಟು ಗ್ಂಡ ಮಲಗಿದ ಕೋಣೆಗೆ ಬಂದಳು. ನೋಡತಾಳೆ, ಒಬ್ಬ ಚೆಂದನ್ನ ಹೆಣ್ಣು ಹುಡುಗಿ ಬಣ್ಣ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಭರ್ಜರಿ ಸೀರೆ ಉಟ್ಟು ಕೊಂಡು ಅವನ ಖೋಲಿಯೊಳಗಿಂದ ಹೊರಗೆ ಬರುತ್ತಿದ್ದಳು. ಮುದುಕಿಯನ್ನು ನೋಡಿದ್ದೇ ಆ ಹೆಂಗಸು ಮುಖ ಮರೆ ಮಾಡಿ ಮನೆಯ ಹೊರಗೆ ಓಡಿ ಹೋಗಿ ಬಿಟ್ಟಳು. ಮುದುಕಿ ಗಂಡನನ್ನು ಎಬ್ಬಿಸಿ ಕೇಳಿದರೆ, ’ಯಾವ ಹೆಣ್ಣು, ಏನು’ ಅಂತ ಅವನೇ ತಿರಗಿ ಕೇಳತಾನೆ. ಗಂಡ ಹೆಂಡತಿಗೆ ಕೈ ಕೈ ಹತ್ತಿಬಿಡತು. . . . ನಮ್ಮ ಮುದುಕಿಗೆ ಒಂದು ಕತೆ, ಒಂದು ಹಾಡು ಗೊತ್ತಿವೆ. ಆದರೆ ಆಕೆ ಎಂದೂ ಯಾರಿಗೂ ಆ ಕತೆ ಹೇಳಿಲ್ಲ, ಆ ಹಾಡು ಕೇಳಿಸಿಲ್ಲ. ಆ ಕತೆಗೂ, ಹಾಡಿಗೂ ಒಳಗೇ ಬಿದ್ದುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದು ಜೀವ ಬೇಸರಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಈ ಹೊತ್ತು ಮುದುಕಿ ಊಟ ಮಾಡಿ ಅಡ್ದ ಆದಳು. ಗೊರಕೆ ಹೊಡೀಲಿಕ್ಕೆ ಬಾಯಿ ತಗೆದಳು. ಕೂಡಲೆ ಕತೆ-ಹಾಡು ಎರಡೂ ಆಕೆಯ ಬಾಯಿಯಿಂದ ಹೊರಗೆ ಜಿಗಿದವು. ಅಟ್ಟ ಏರಿ ಮೂಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಅಡಗಿಕೊಂಡು ಕೂತವು. ರಾತ್ರಿ ಮುದುಕ ನಿದ್ದೆ ಹೋಗೋದೇ ತಡ, ಕತೆ ಹುಡುಗಿಯ ರೂಪ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡಿತು. ಹಾಡು ಸೀರೆಯ ರೂಪ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊಂಡಿತು. ಮುದುಕಿ ಬರೋಹೊತ್ತಿಗೆ ಸರಿಯಾಗಿ ಹೊರಗೆ ಬಂತು. ಹೀಗೆ ಮನೆಯೊಳಗೆ ಜಗಳ ಹಚ್ಚಿಕೊಟ್ಟು, ಕತೆ-ಹಾಡು ಎರಡೂ ತಮ್ಮ ಸೇಡು ತೀರಿಸಿಕೊಂಡವು.
And for those interested viewers, here is a visual of the opening scene of the story of 'A Story and a Song'. Just to see how the song and the story have developed a life of their own.
Dear reader, I hope you have enjoyed the journey of this single story and song across different cultures and literary genres. Do share your song and story, and hoping to set some things right for myself, I have shared this cautionary tale. If you are creative, and have a story and a song, better share it!!
Dear Reader, if you are happy to read this blog, please share👇and hit the follow button 👉and if you want to, share this blog with your friends and like-minded readers. Looking forward to your thoughts. Share your comments directly with me at rekhadatta02@gmail.com or message me @rekhadatta1 on Instagram. I shall send the links to you personally. Thank you for your interest.
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