A Durga puja evening spent on the roomy verandah with Grandma, floating with the marvelous Assamese folktales, covered in the soft moonlight and fireflies, was a memory to cherish. I remember how enthralled my brother and I used to be as we listen to her stories, the tales of ‘Burhi Aair Xadh,’ as well as many more fascinating tales from Assam, around the fireplace, thinking and imagining the scenarios from the stories.
Storytelling is a centuries-old art. Every society and every nation in the globe engaged in this practice. Folktales come in a variety of forms because of this. Even today, many people enjoy listening to stories, particularly young children. When, how, and for what reasons did humans start telling stories among themselves?
I believe that when people in earlier human societies had sufficient downtime and needed to spend a lot of time after completing their necessary tasks, they would congregate in a specific location and start to share stories about the various experiences they had gained through doing things for themselves or by witnessing various events. These tales were later shared with children, who found them very entertaining and listened to them with great interest. Most likely, ancient people believed that children should acquire knowledge that was both essential and helpful in developing moral character. These tales can inspire children who are disinterested in reading and learning to do so. By hearing these tales, even the pampered and impolite kids can be changed.
Coming from a family of Writers and Story tellers, I was fortunate enough to listen to many such stories by my grandparents from both the sides of the family. Growing up I realized, some of these stories mostly helped us to put back in our natural form and we imagined if it can happen in stories then it can happen in real life as well. For example – When we heard stories about ‘Burha Dangoria’ and how he used to protect the Bhagavad Gita in every Naamghar made us realize that if we don’t go there then Burha Dangoria might come looking for us.
In our ancestral home in Jhaaji (Sivasagar District if Assam), there was a small pond behind it and our Grandmother used to tell that a “Baak” lives there and feeds on fishes and if we don’t sleep early then he might come for us taking a human form of someone from our own family. We used to get very scared and remained humble everytime we used to listen to these stories.
A folktale is known as a “sadhukatha” in Assamese. Lakshminath Bezbarua, the first person to investigate folktales in Assam, claims that “Sadhukatha” is the name of the saints. It is the counsel of upright individuals. Grandma’s Tales, also known as Burhi Aai’r Xaadhu, is a compilation of folktales put together by renowned Assamese author and poet Laxminath Bezbarua. As with most folktales, there was no recorded documentation of these tales prior to this collection. The majority of the tales are based on the life of a typical villager, though some of them are more like the Assamese adaptation of Panchatantra, featuring talking animals and birds as the primary characters.
Popular Folktales That Are Common In Assamese Culture Include:
1. Tejimola – In what is arguably the most well-known of all Burhi Aai’r Xadhu, a girl named Tejimola has her evil stepmother murder her in a jealous rage while Tejimola’s father is away on business as a traveling merchant. Tejimola’s stepmother tries to make her vanish forever, but Tejimola changes into other shapes and lives on in spirit. The narrative has a happy conclusion in which Tejimola finds herself in her father’s arms as a lotus blossom as he travels home. With magic and emotions all packed in, this story is a fascinating narration from beginning till the finish.
2. Bandor aru Xiyal (Monkey and Fox) – It is a well-known tale of a fox and a monkey who, despite claiming to be pals, are always outsmarting one another. The fox convinces the monkey to destroy a beehive hive by claiming it is a royal drum, whereas the monkey denies the fox his fair share of food by taking advantage of the fact that the monkey can scale trees but the fox cannot. In this story with a strong moral, the selfish, stupid monkey pays with his life if you lie to your companions.
3. Juwai’r Xadhu – In this tale, “Juwai,” which means son-in-law, a foolish guy visits his in-laws. He ends up giving all of his clothes to his own shadow in order to get rid of it because he believes his own shadow to be a real individual. To compound his problems, he has night-blindness, which he attempts to conceal from his in-laws, which causes a lot of confusion.
4. Lotkon – An intelligent but poor man sets out on a journey to show his worth after growing weary of his wife’s constant nagging. He succeeds in fooling many people along the way thanks to his cunning. From eating candy in a candy store by tricking the owner’s son into thinking his name was “Makhi” (which means “housefly”) to making a man run around a tree hanging on to a pig’s tail, the clever man returns home with riches, much to the delight of his wife.
5. Dhura Kauri aru Tiposi – This story is a narration of how the intelligent bird escapes from the crow’s grasp using deception, by forcing the crow to fly around in search of something that eventually results in the crow’s death. Dhura Kauri means a crow, and Tiposi is a pigeon.
According to the Assamese folk society, “Nature is much better than cruelty or ugliness of men” when it comes to the relationship between humans and animals. They derived this notion from folktales. The human race hurt itself. Men’s destruction is a result of their own actions. But nature never disregards humans. It is constantly accessible to human civilization. Some folktales begin with the anguish and unfortunate circumstances of their protagonists and heroines. The power-wielding heroes and heroines must battle the evil force. But in the end, the hero experiences happiness thanks to divine power and mercy. Their lives are prosperous and powerful because of god strength. The Kite’s Daughter and Tejimola, Tula, and Teja are two instances that could be used, and in each case, the characters dealt with numerous issues brought on by their enemies.
Folktales and Folklores teaches us how to tackle the difficult situations in our life. Life is not always a bed of roses keeping in mind that there are dangerous thorns to harm us always. There will be evil forces to put you down the drain, it’s only upon us how we fight it and win the race at the end. With the coming of technology folktales have lost their space. This World Story Telling Day promise yourself to put your cellphones and laptop away when you visit your grandparents the next and ask them to recite you the old folktales also keeping in mind that it’s only upon us to pass on these qualities of story telling to the future generations.