A new, nice twist to wonderland of Tamil Nadu's folktales

CHENNAI: The wrath of goddess Kali gets placated by a plate full of appams and a peppercorn’s wit in Narayan Devanathan’s debut book ‘Folktales from Tamil Nadu’. In 20 such stories, a fly who forgot his own name to a sparrow who drinks a lake full of payasam, take us and their sweet paatis on quirky journeys around life. We all know ‘Nila Nila Odi Va’, but the book presents it to the readers with an inventive twist.

The book was waiting to be written as Narayan grew up through the countless stories his mother told him as the ‘kadai kutti’ in the family. However, his writing journey began when he became inclined towards the English language. “My cousin had an English book for his GRE. That had a massive amount of words, their roots, their meanings and usage. I happened to pick up that book, and fell in love with it because it was about words. My love for words led me to writing,” he says.

This book is as much for children as it is for adults, for he wants adults to live through each day as it comes. “Regardless of your age, I hope you will be reading this as a child. I will talk as if I’m a child, and I will talk to you as if you are a child,” he writes in his author’s note. However, like the genesis of the book, this philosophy also goes back to his childhood. “My dad once told me, growing old is inevitable, but growing up is optional. I think I kind of retained that and remained a kid in many ways, including approaching life with this philosophy that it’s there to be enjoyed every day. That motivated me to write for children first,” he adds.

The common thread that perhaps connects all the stories in the book is food. In a story, a Kokku (crane) refuses to eat anything but ayirai meen (Spiny Loach), while in another, a detective’s special power is deducing what is cooking by sniffing. As much as the animals and paatis take one around, it is also the food that entices one to turn each page. “The common deity, probably in all of the stories, is food,” jokes the author. Elaborating, he says, “Maybe because I was the youngest, I always grew up with food. This is also a way I have retained my mother in the book,” he says. While the food comes in all its glory, they also have a tune to them. “‘GMMMKYUMMMM!” A king gulps down a health potion.

‘I lost my tail but gained a knife, dum-dum-dum! I lost a knife but gained a mango, dumdum-dum! I lost a mango but gained some rice, dum-dumdum! I lost the rice but gained some oil, dum-dum-dum!” sings a monkey in one of the stories as he tries to quench his thirst. While music forms part of most stories, some of them are also written in verses like: ‘The Lazy Crow and the Monkey and the Drum’. “Tamil also has a unique rhythm and music to it. With the stories in verses, I try to bring that uniqueness into the English language,” he adds. This is another way of preserving the oral narratives he inherited from his mother and her sense of music.

The book also has illustrations by Nirzara Verulkar with scenes from the stories and also definitions of certain Tamil words and phrases, like kolam, payasam, ammi kallu and more. For instance, Kolam is described as a woman drawing a kolam, defined as “a decorative design hand-drawn using rice flour that also serves as food for small insects and birds”.