 This lecture is titled Indian writing writers and narrators. It is the third part of module 2, which is exclusively devoted to Indian writing and contemporary Indian generative possibilities. In this lecture, we have focused our attention on narrators, so that we can give you a glimpse into plural oral traditions and their contemporary renderings. This will help us understand our own background and our own cultural context in a renewed fashion, because the kind of self-reflexivity that you saw in Atwood or Camus or in any of the other writers that we have mentioned so far. You would find that similar kind of self-reflexivity or also the concern about the form of narration, the kind of cultural space that it creates, this exists in great abundance in the oral tradition as well. So, it is really indeed quite exciting to be able to share this rich material with you. The outline of the lecture is provided for your clarity. The lecture is divided into three parts. In part 1, we will look at narratives and narrators from oral tradition. You remember, we had talked about oral traditions while talking about Atwood's elusiveness. She herself had singled out many examples from the western oral tradition and she had also pointed out how in the transition from the oral to the print culture, there are major changes that occur in the relationship of the narrator and the audience, the writer and the audience. So, here also what you would find is the focus on the orality of these folk tales and therefore, we have used the word narrators for those who narrate the tales because the narration imposes a very flexible relationship with the audience. So, therefore, the first part is titled narratives and narrators from oral tradition, folk tales and folk plays. In the second part, in terms of folk tales, we look at their types and examples and the formalist elements because after all, we are interested in the process of writing and certain unique ways of looking at the world that mythic and folk material evokes in us. In the folk plays, we will look at their relationship with the masses and we look at some examples and with the sense that they have also been evolving over a very long period of time. Part 3 is devoted to the folk material in contemporary context. We look at issues of translation which A.K. Ramanujan has highlighted while translating folk tales from India. We look at the creative imagination of writers like Rishiti, Mahasweta Devi and other performers and different kind of contemporary narrators like Tijan Bai in order to understand the prolific nature of this relationship. So, then let us first of all look at some of the critical positions that we had identified while looking at the writing processes. We had looked at the notion of the other with reference to what Saeed had to say about the othering process and the problems that are involved in the process of othering, looking at someone not like you or someone different. So, in that sense, one would like to point out that our reading of Indian material also requires the same level of alertness. We cannot assume that all our definitions, all our perceptions, all our influences are problem free. They may be very, very immediate, our sense of connection to many of the things that we are talking about, it may be immediate, but at the same time we would like critical acumen to play an important part in understanding these readings. So, that is why I have listed a few points here for your consideration that our reading of non-Indian writers was taken with critical awareness about the writer, the text and the context. A similar alertness is necessary for reading Indian writers, their texts and their context. Though, of course, an immediate sense of connection can be felt inwardly and therefore, it would have a very, very different relationship and we will show through examples how that also can be seen in terms of productive ways of developing your own writing work. Now, so far as our own scene is concerned, our own country is concerned, it is us, you know, it is fraught with issues that a billion plus people pose with their own sense of cultural nuances. No two people see the world in the same way and added to that are issues of diversity. So, on both these counts, I think one has to realize that there are, you know, weakened billion voices speaking at the same time. I think Rishithi captured that very well and you can read Rishithi to understand that sense. But certainly, the issue of multiple voices, the cultural nuances, the question of many languages and also the fact that we are conducting this discussion of diversity through English language. All of this puts pressure of an unprecedented kind. It also can be turned, it can also be turned into a creative process, but I think the difficulties should not be undermined so that you can examine it, this process critically. So, we will keep this richness and this diversity, this, you know, complexity in mind and then with all these ideas in our mind, we begin to look at the folk material. I have labeled this classification in terms of the term narrative tradition. What of course, I have implied here is the transition of material from orality to its narration, that is, its movement from orality to print culture because some of the material that we are looking at, it begins to make the stories, the ideas about the stories available in print culture. So, therefore, I have used the word narrative tradition which is a larger term, not necessarily applicable to the oral tradition, but please keep that in mind in terms of how I have contextualized the discussion. So, within this, there are three classifications that scholars in the field make. The classifications are described as the classical, the folk and the modern. So, despite cultural diversity that we talked about, the ancient myths and epics, they resonate in the Indian imagination and also contemporary thought processes in an absolutely unprecedented manner. So, our focus on folk enables understanding of loosely structured narrative come performative aesthetic forms. In other words, what I am trying to suggest is the fact that the folk forms are not really an exclusive terrain which has no connection to either the classical and now the modern. The folk forms have very deep ties with the mythic and with all the epics that we know very deeply and you know, they are sort of part of our cultural environment, but definitely what the folk stands for is its quality of retaining a very loosely defined narrative structure. It is not bound by rules, regulations, prescriptions and regimentation. So, it is this element of freedom and flexibility that I think speaks to a lot of us in different ways as it did to the audience for which the stories were, you know, narrated. Folk tales are in that sense ancient stories which as I said, they continue to circulate and are told and retold their meanings anchored in the different contexts of telling. They have deep roots in oral tradition and folklore and they are steeped in the life of a community and often they are performed in front of or presented to an audience and of course, their revival in print culture is another phenomenon, it gives it a different kind of flavor. So now, when we begin to look at more features of this form, what is visible is the ability of the oral tales to be narrated and performed in wide variety of innovative forms. So, not only does the text change even the manner of telling changes, the aesthetic form within which they are performed that also changes. So, there are lots of innovations there and the teller of the tale though is not described as a writer. Although there are professional narrators, tellers and performers and often you would hear of certain such narrator who is better than anybody else, but they never get the status of a writer with all the modern associations that we have with the writer as a person who stands out in the social framework with his or her unique presence and voice. So, there is a great degree of anonymity that is associated with these narrations. One can also say that there is also a great degree of democratic you know element involved in sharing these stories. There is as if they belong to everybody and in that sense even if we know about a great narrator or teller or performer, we always think of that person with reference to a specific form, a specific way of doing things and the person is not given that much of individualized attention. The element of writing and copyright all these are also modern issues. So, the other context of narration of course, they are not only in public spaces, these are also narrated within the domestic framework and they have their own tradition. There are male centered tales and there are women centered tales especially within the domestic framework. These two kinds of forms have proliferated and there are also ritual tales which of course I think is an absolutely amazing phenomenon and so the vratakathas are also something that one can look at. So, we have all these folk tales that are part of our cultural environment and then we can also look at another kind of folk phenomenon where the element of performance is more dominant. In the stories the element of narration is important and these are narrated and therefore performed, but in folk plays the focus is on performance and again within this there are the categories of classical folk modern that we found in the narrative framework also. So, in terms of classical you have Sanskrit theater and drama, ritual and devotional traditions. In terms of the folk popular traditions there are also forms that have evolved and during the process of decolonization they became highly politicized and in that sense they are also described as intermediary forms. So, they have features of the classical they also have features of the modern and the modern is in terms of the political engagement with the contemporary issue. So, we will look at the examples briefly so that you can also expose yourself to more possibilities in terms of the riches that you already have. The third category is that of modern theater which is placed around 1800 in terms of the influence of the western forms of prose plays. So, now the folk plays therefore are placed within this trajectory they are intermediary form with some features of the classical and some features of the modern. The other aspect of the folk forms is related to these ideas that Farley Richmond and others they pointed out in a book devoted to Indian theater traditions of performance that this is what they have to say. The focus on folk forms according to Richmond and others whatever their origins they depend on patronage on the masses and that is a very very important feature. Patronage comes from people masses not the very powerful who also sometimes mould the content. So, this is really a people's form they are given more to entertainment and profane rather than sacred purposes that is in instead of trying to reinforce the worldview of a power group or an existing powerful hegemonic situation what they do is to tweak it a little bit. So, the third attribute that Farley Richmond and others have pointed out is related to folk popular forms and their concern regarding the mundane life of human beings rather than gods and this is rather interesting because what it does therefore is to give a sense of intimacy to the form while you read it there is a kind of sense of intimacy with the content because it is really about the audience or it is about this framework where we lead in which we lead our lives the domestic framework the intimate framework of day-to-day existence. So, this is where they are located. So, these are very interesting aspects that you can reflect on as you look at the examples. The other observation that we wish to place before you that Richmond and others have made is related to the fact that in these folk plays what they do is to the performers integrate in varying proportions vocal and instrumental music dance and mimatic action and although the forms may vary in their position in the sacred profane continuum all are set within the sacred context as indicated by some form of religious preliminary. That is why I pointed out to you earlier that they are sort of intermediary forms because they have some features of the classical and at the same time they go into another kind of territory of certain amount of tweaking of these traditions. What perhaps will be useful for us is to look at some of the folk tales in terms of types and examples specially tales that show their concern with formalist elements. How are these tales constructed? What are the spaces that they create this it would be useful to have a look at those and we will also look at some examples of folk plays and their links with the masses and also the fact that within each one of those examples there has been tremendous amount of evolution within each form. We have selected A. K. Ramanujan's selection of folk tales and he himself actually examined 22 Indian languages which cover most of the country's regions and he went on to comment on the diversity of the folk tales and their overlap. So, this resource we have placed before you in order to strengthen our understanding of folk forms and their flexibility and the aesthetic lessons one can learn from them. According to Ramanujan there is an interacting continuum of the classical, the folk and the popular. All of his work is based on intensive research and therefore the illustrative folk tales actually do give us the multiplicity of our cultural background and at the same time there are certain types that are repeated across the various regions of the country. As he himself put it what it has shown to him is not only the multiplicity of languages and dialects, but also the incredibly complex braiding of traditions and counter traditions. Now of course the version that we will place before you will be the version that has been worked out in the print media which makes it a very different cultural artifact. What Ramanujan has said in the preface to his folk tales from India is related to the fact that other resources such as the Sanskrit, the Kathasarit, Sagar, Panchatantra, the Pali, Jatak tales and Hindu or Jain Paranas can also be explored by you independently. These are great resources, but he has been trying to concentrate on forms that are not easily accessible to people and therefore the translations work around the more of the domestic framework or the intimate framework within which many of the folk tales work out. The canonized epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana often are sources for some of the tales, but these you are already familiar with in there many versions, translations and media. So, you know you will be able to immediately connect to the tales. According to Ramanujan although his is the print version, but he still thinks that there is a quality of improvisation that one can cherish and enjoy as he puts it. Every tale here is only one telling held down in writing for the nonce till you or someone else reads it, brings it to life and changes it by retelling it. So, consider me the latest teller and yourself the latest listener who in turn will retell the tale, but of course, so far as I am concerned I do have to think about the copyright and in that sense his tale becomes a fixed entity, but still the spirit is very very close to the spirit of folk tales. Ramanujan goes on to say that a folk tale is a poetic text that carries some of the cultural context within it. It is also a travelling metaphor that finds a new meaning with each telling. Based on Ramanujan's notes with reference to international indexes of folk tales, we have selected three or four types to place them before you. The first one is a story in search of an audience which according to his notes is a motif which has a number is called prophecy, the future greatness of unborn child and this particular form is available in Gandhi, Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi. Vratakathas like these are yet to be classified and indexed. The example that we have in mind which you know again out of many examples that he has provided we have chosen this is related to the you know vrata in which the person in this case a woman has to narrate a story to someone and only then she can break that vrat. I would not go into all the details of this story right now but certainly you can read the vratakatha that is included here where this woman she goes around looking for an audience and she is not able to really convince anyone to listen to her and therefore then finally in great despair she sort of a chances on a pregnant woman who is poor and very hungry. So, this pregnant woman agrees to listen to the tale provided the narrator would provide her with food so that she can sort of satiate her hunger which is actually doubled because she is carrying the baby within her. So, the woman the woman who has to break her fast she goes back and gets her something to eat the woman eats and goes off to sleep she has been so tired and now again the old woman is in a fix till she hears a voice from the womb saying tell me the story and so she narrates the story of the sun god and you know thereby after that she breaks the fast and blesses the unborn child who later on finds this boon to be a boon that transforms her life. So, this is the kind of a tale here where again as I said you know that sense of the urgency of a story that is captured through this ritual now it can speak to us in many many different ways we not part of the culture where we are necessarily going to fast and narrate a story, but it really speaks very eloquently of certain you know cultural habits and thoughts and also this preoccupation with generation. The other form that we thought of placing before you is a very interesting form of which is typified by this label that Ramanujan has given it the literal fool and these are Tenali Ram stories specially the stories surrounding Ramayana. These pranks our stories according to Ramanujan they tend to literalize the fiction or the metaphor to show what happens when you break the barrier between imagined fiction and lived reality. So, again it sort of deals with the kind of transformation that occurs when you tell a tale one of these I have placed before you where you know once a courtesan invited Tenali Ram to recite the story of the Ramayana and he began the story by saying Ram and Sita went to the forest and stopped there he said nothing more the courtesan waited and waited and finally asked then what happened don't be impatient said Tenali Ram they are still walking in the forest. Another story in this sort of framework is the story that I would just briefly paraphrase. So, therefore the other story is related to this gentleman who is very crude and not given to finer thought processes and his wife agonizes a lot about this absence of you know involvement with cultural phenomenon and conversations with him. So, she sort of forces him to go and listen to Ramayana tales being you know narrated in her neighborhood and he sort of finally you know agrees to keep awake he used to go and fall asleep. So, on the fourth day however his wife she went with him and she was able to keep him awake he got very absorbed in that narration because he suddenly found that the narration was truly enchanting and gripping and as she began to enjoy that narration came the part of Hanuman who actually you know Sita Sita's ring is dropped by him by mistake in the ocean and then Hanuman agonizes about this mishap and he gets so absorbed in this narration that he gets up and says wait Hanuman I will go retrieve the ring and he jumps into the ocean he retrieves the ring and brings it back to Hanuman. The audience is enchanted also by this other event that has surfaced and from that day onwards this particular gentleman you know gains new kind of respect in the community and he becomes a very transformed person and the story ends with this pronouncement that this is what happens when you hear Ramayana being you know. So, these are sort of tales which are slightly within the sacred and at the same time they also deal with this imaginary space the space of vivid imagination that you engage with when you listen to the stories or when you narrate these stories also. The other kind of story that we found fascinating was stories about stories you know there is this sense in the collection of Ramanujans that tales have to be told there is that sense of urgency he has captured through multiple examples. These stories and narrations they also take you to another level of your existence they have the power to break the barrier between reality and fiction resulting in deepening of experience. There are also stories that show that stories should not be repressed or stories like truth cannot be repressed. So, there are stories like the Baba's secret where the Baba you know while he attends to the king he suddenly discovers that the king has the ears of a donkey and at the same time he is not able to reveal this truth because the king forbids him from revealing the secret to anybody else for obvious reasons because people would then lose all their respect for his power and position and therefore now this whole story is about what happens to the barber and how he tries to sort of deal with this situation till he literally falls ill and finally he is not able to contain himself and speaks the secret to the tree hoping that at least the tree would not reveal the secret but even that did not happen and when a drum is made out of this tree and the drum is played in the king's court the secret comes out loud and clear. So, there is again that sense of urgency that sense of intimacy in these stories the sense of certain amount of subversive quality also that you begin to notice and again there are lots and lots of stories that Ramanujan has collected in order to show this desire to tell the story as if you know if the stories are not told then some they would be lost to the community. So, the notion of the story has a very interesting standing within the folk imagination. There are two or three things that Ramanujan has pointed out he says that in the untold stories where the secrets are revealed finally like the barber's tail and many other stories there is a cathartic function that they play. So, let me read out what he has to say stories cry out to be told passed on and so kept alive if they are not told they take other forms and exact revenge on the one who holds them and suffocates them. So, for example, the other story which we have not shared with you tell it to the walls or the barber's secret and therefore, again as I said this is you know there are lots of interesting formalist elements in these tales that you know really you immediately evoke an interesting connection to content form and the context also. There are other elements in terms of the starting point of the story where the starting point usually you know goes like this once upon a time in a certain town and these kinds of starting points these are keys for our entry into a tale world and a tale time and they let us cross a threshold into another kind of space. There are also characteristic endings that I am sure you will be able to also pull out of your own context too or your own experience of these narrative traditions, but he has pointed out these interesting endings like when the tale ends the narrator says we had to send our clothes to the washerman so we had to come home. So, end of story there the story went to Kanchi and we came home end of story again they are there we are here that is the third type. So, what they do you know these starting points or that those end points and also the transformation that occur in the middle there are these elements of identification and disidentification of the listeners with their characters and these have triggers in the tales and they happen at different stages of a tale or a performance. So, you become the other and then you come back to yourself those are the kinds of trajectories that are being referred to here. For example, Ramanujan says at the end of a romantic King and Queen story the oria teller says I saw the prince other day in the market, but he would not talk to me. So, you come back to earth again folk plays are very different though from these narrations which are intimate and here in the folk plays there is an element of self conscious performativity. There are lots and varieties within these, but let me just quickly point out some of the examples of folk forms that really you may be familiar with already Jatra of Bengal is extremely well known. There is Bhavai of Gujarat, Nautanki of North India, Tamasha of Maharashtra, Burakatha of Anta Pradesh, Pandavani specially Tijanbhai's rendering which we will show you towards the end of this lecture. So, these forms we have described as narratives you know from narratives they have gone to performance in theatre spaces. So, they have more of a public presence and therefore, the nature of these folk forms although it is still very flexible, very fluid, but at the same time I think we need to look at some of the features quickly. So, folk forms they have had a kind of political role in the decolonization process and one of the examples that highlights those traditions is related to Mahasweta Devi's own political theatre for the oppressed in which she has used folk imagination, folk tales and also the close bond between people and these tales because those tales almost define certain communities. The concluding Tijanbhai clip we definitely want to draw your attention to that even within the form you know even if let us say it is very community oriented form and even within those community oriented forms within a strong tradition the changes that have occurred in contemporary period are really worth looking at. For example, Tijanbhai is the first woman to really perform the Pandavani form and play a whole lot of roles herself. Similarly, when we talk about Mahasweta Devi we are really actually not talking about the sense of community in the way let us say Tijanbhai feels that sense of community because she belongs to the folk tradition from within. Whereas, modernist interpretation of folk forms is a slightly different realm although we are equally interested in both, but the second one I think has greater impact on our imagination. But let me just quickly also point out that the issues of translation they loom large in our connection to whatever is available to us in terms of print culture, but perhaps less of that is a problem when we look at it as a performative form. While we talk about translation Ijaz Ahmed had already talked about it in theory classes nations and literatures where he had pointed out that English translations create a very, very big problem because they are so different from our cultural context, but at the same time the largest archives of translations in India are available in English. Pramanujan also was sharply aware of this problem although he himself is a bilingual poet he did not take the translation process very lightly. He pointed out that nothing can reproduce the original telling of a tale these were all translated the tales that he translated these were all translated by different hands at different times and places and I have retold them making slight changes in some and more than slight in others where the language was full some cumbersome or simply outdated. So, it becomes a different version from the original, but there is nothing like a fixed original because the stories are constantly circulating and they are being improvised they are being recreated and as I said they become a part of the collective you know resource of a community. In terms of translations and transcreations I therefore now want to draw your retention to contemporary writers who have also been greatly influenced by the you know the kind of freedom the kind of celebration that the folk forms really allow us they have exposed us to those possibilities. In Salman Rishhti too you would find an internalization of the oral narrative tradition then there is this exuberant blend of the interacting continuum of the classical the folk and the popular in the mix of fantasy and reality in Midnai's children he has the he has used the form of tales within tales like the Kathasaritsagar including Salim Senai's life story which is recounted orally to Padma and I like to read what he says about Padma in the chapter called my tenth birthday because that immediately gives you some sense of what I am referring to that is this sense of our cultural context its surfaces quite surprisingly and quite suddenly in many unexpected ways and this is what that write up or that part of the novel captures where already Salim and Shiva there they have this intermixed identity the children have been exchanged at birth and now of course Salim Senai he talks about Padma to whom he is narrating his tale I find myself overwhelmed all of a sudden by an older learning while here beside me is my Padma whose return I had so earnestly desired my Padma the lotus goddess the one who possesses dung whose honey like and made of gold whose sons are moisture and mud and he cannot really stop once he starts on this trail he just cannot stop and as he says that suddenly he is overwhelmed by this older learning and this is what I was trying to suggest is so unexpectedly overwhelmed by many of these stories the symbols the travelling metaphors that we really sometimes begin to speak in a way that we didn't anticipate there is this very famous story of Girish Karnad who wanted to write in in English actually when he started off his career as a writer but Kannada his mother tongue that surfaced in his consciousness he didn't quite expect that not only that the Yajati myth surfaced as a sort of unifying element of his consciousness but to come back to Rishni he says again within that same segment Padma who along with the Yaksha Jini who represent the sacred treasure of the earth and the sacred rivers Ganga Yamuna Saraswati and the tree goddesses is one of the guardians of life beguiling and comforting mortal men while they pass through the dream web of Maya Padma the lotus scallops etc etc it goes on and you can read the book yourself in order to enjoy the sudden surfacing of Salim's you know connection to these ancient narrations metaphors etc what they seem to do is to just in some ways dazzle us with their possibilities I think of Ashish Mahal as a sort of metaphor that comes to my mind where suddenly the same person you begin to see in ten different ways or hundred different ways now moving from Salim Senai to Mahasweta Devi in Mahasweta Devi's world view where the issue of the oppressor the marginalized is an extremely important issue she in water has Magai dome the protagonist and not only just the protagonist but the dome community which is completely defined by their belief in certain tales and they narrate these tales about their origin and about their you know community all the time now during the play at one point there is a strong struggle between Gura the son of Magai dome who feels that his father who is a water diviner he divides water but at the same time that water is denied to him because of the caste system but Magai is passionately devoted to this idea of divining water which has been actually given as a blessing to the dome community and this is what he has to say and this is again I am reading this in order to show how intensely these stories define many communities that the folk tales are not only tales for entertainment but these are also tales that seem to also define the identity of certain groups so Magai dome here he says to his son Ganga told Basumati hold the nether Ganga in your bowels and his son Dura says then and he says rising to his feet to enact the drama of how it all happened so the nether Ganga flowed into the secret depths of the mother earth my earliest ancestor had come all prepared to offer puja to the holy river at her advent but by the time he arrived Bhagirath had already left with Ganga so he stuffed himself up with booze gathered all that he had brought with him to offer to the holy river and offered puja to the nether Ganga once he closed his eyes to do a bisance the drunken stupor took over and he fell asleep when he opened his eyes there was no sign any longer of Ganga it was emptiness all around he was just a dome after all and naive and so easily fooled so he thought I must have dreamt it all then from the bowels of the earth the nether Ganga herself and then he raises his folded palms to his head and Magai goes on to say the mother deity of all the hidden waters spoke you are my chosen priest I am the goddess the nether Ganga whenever men dig for a well or a pond you will gather the offerings pray for water and go around looking for where the water lies hidden till I tell you where to dig so such intimate contacts and relationships and also talents are defined in this way because I am sure Magai dome had some scientific basis for his ability to find where the water exists water bodies are but at the same time it is this myth come folk tale that almost defines his sensibility and that of his community the concluding clip that we would like to place before you in order to help you think about the many formalist elements of folk forms and what they can do to your own imagination and also how you can allow many of these tales to surface in your consciousness because I am sure you may have your own eclectic blend of stories the clip pertains to Tijan Bai and I have titled it transcreations being and multiplicities and the reason I have called it being and multiplicities is related to the fact that Tijan Bai plays the part of many many characters in her narrative and she has a musical instrument in her hand and you will be able to see directly how through this form she is able to transform herself constantly and become many others and at the same time come back to herself as Tijan Bai the very bold and innovative performer in a sense then that offers other kinds of lessons about otherness which we also perhaps can leave to your own imagination you can see what you can do about it this is of course a performative form but what happens if we bring it to the discussion of writing and writing with a sense of multiplicities we will see what we can do with that our reading list of course is provided here some of which we have shared earlier in another context but Ramanujan's folk tales I hope you will read and enjoy them similarly Salman Rishdi's book we had referred to earlier and I think his introduction where he talks about India being a horn of plenty I think that something that again evokes our own sense of how despite the English translations and despite our own relationship to English as a language of thought and creation one can see that we still remain very very Indian and with that I would conclude this session and you know plays Tijan Bai's performative piece before you thank you