Layout 3 - India Foundation for the Arts - IFA

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ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1
As children we grow up
listening to stories narrated
by mothers and
grandmothers. While putting children
to sleep, while bathing them or, on a
hot afternoon, sitting on the thinnai, a
raised platform outside the house near
the front door, stories would be told.
Folk stories and epic stories are first
heard in the voice of a narrator before
they are read. It is through these
narrations that one later enters into an
epic text to read about Rama.
My memory of Ramayana narration
goes back to my early childhood. I was
a very thin and weak child and so, to
make me strong, my mother used to
apply cod liver oil on my body and
massage me and give me oil baths.
And she used to tell me the Ramayana
to divert my mind from the pain of
massaging. I remember she always told
the story of how Dasaratha gave his
three wives payasam (milk pudding),
and of how Rama and his brothers
were born. Oil baths always meant the
story of Rama’s birth.
My mother conceived me towards the
end of the Second World War. My
parents lived in Bombay then. Those
were difficult times. Food grains were
available only through a rationing
system. My mother had to carry bags
of wheat to her Punjabi neighbours on
the third floor to exchange the wheat
for rice. It was not a good time to have
a third child. My mother took some
local medicines to get rid of the foetus.
But it was a stubborn foetus. And so I
have survived to write this.
Whenever I heard the story of Rama’s
birth I imagined that my mother also
would have taken payasam and
conceived me. She had actually taken
not payasam but spurious medicines.
Maybe she felt a sense of guilt and she
wanted me to be strong and that is
why she told me that part of the
Ramayana which had to do with birth
after consuming sweet pudding. It was
her way of making up for what she
had done. The smell of the cod liver
oil, the story of Rama’s birth, and my
mother’s soft voice narrating the story
while massaging my body with oil
have remained memories linked with
the narration of the Ramayana for me.
There are also other associated
memories of Ramayana narration. An
interesting aspect is that a child in
India can listen to stories about
rakshasas and rakshasis (male and
female demons) with absolutely no
fear. A ten-headed Ravana evokes no
fear. During my student days I was
staying with an American family. I