Where Are You Going, You Monkeys?

By Ki. Rajanarayanan

The celebrated folklorist Ki. Rajanarayanan (1923-2021) spent over 80 years collecting the weirdest and wildest tales of the karisal mannu, the black-soil region around Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu, India.

This book contains a gallery of jealous husbands and conniving goddesses, pious sparrows and randy mice, jewel-crazy girl ghosts and angry star demons, as well as a chapter of "naughty & dirty" folktales!

Translated from the Tamil by Pritham K. Chakravarthy. Includes 8 illustrations by Trotsky Marudu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blaft Publications
• Release date: Aug 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9789380636597

Ki. Rajanarayanan

Ki. Rajanarayanan (b. 1923), popularly known as Ki. Ra., was a powerful writer and teller of tales rooted in the soil of Tamil Nadu, and a recipient of the prestigious Kalaimamani and Sahitya Akademi awards. His 1958 short story "Mayamaan" is often seen as marking the beginning of the Golden Age of modern Tamil literature. Veering away from the European influences which characterized much of the fiction from the Tamil revivalist period, Ki. Ra. chose to relate tales in the spoken dialect of the land in which he was born.He continued to produce work well into this century, publishing a collection of stories and helping launch a new literary magazine at the age of 97. He was cremated in 2021 with full state honours.

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where are you going,

you monkeys?

folktales from tamil nadu

collected and retold by

Ki. Rajanarayanan

translated from the Tamil by

Pritham K. Chakravarthy

with illustrations by

Trotsky Marudu

blaftblackandwhite.tif4418.jpg4396.jpg

Nattupura Kadhai Kalanjiyam published 2007 by Annam, Thanjavur

English translation copyright © 2008 Blaft Publications

Illustrations © 2008 Trotsky Marudu

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, psychic, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

ISBN (EPUB edition) 978-93-80636-59-7

Blaft Publications Pvt. Ltd.

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Neelankarai

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email: [e-mail]

website: blaft.com

Blaft Publications USA LLC

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Berkeley, CA 94702

I would like to thank Ki. Rajanarayanan for answering my endless queries; both him and his wife Ganavathiammal for their cooperation and hospitality; Rakesh Khanna for his editing of the manuscript; Kaveri Lalchand and Anushka Meenakshi for their valuable comments and suggestions; Malavika.PC for her cover design; Trotsky Marudu for his illustrations; Sundar Kali and Charu Nivedita for clearing various doubts; and finally Chaks, for trusting that I could do it.

– Pritham K. Chakravarthy

about these tales

It always seems to me that neither the writers nor the publishers of Tamil Nadu are very keen on bringing the folktales of our native soil into print. Even this effort of mine comes pretty late.1

Most of the tales recorded here are tales that have been told and retold among the people of the karisal kaadu, the dry black-soil country down south, where I was born. I have forgotten so many of the tales I had heard as a child—and there is no one left who can recall them for me. If such neglect continues, then even the few tales I’ve managed to gather will disappear into thin air.

There are many types of tales:

1. Stories that are narrated on a stage for an audience.

2. Stories shared by friends in private.

3. Stories shared by a man and a woman during their intimate moments.

4. Stories that children tell amongst themselves.

5. Stories that are told to children by adults.

…and many, many more types. There are also some that will never find their way into print, for they are so obscene.

◊

If a person masters a hundred folktales, his knowledge about the world in general increases. As we grow up, there are certain things taught to us at school and at home—but isn’t there a whole other world of knowledge that is not spoken of? Perhaps that’s the purpose of these tales: to act as our friendly tutor on these other matters.

Many educated people may scorn some of these tales for being dirty and offensive. But to me they do not seem very different from the explicit sculptures on our temple gopurams. If these tales are vulgar, then so are those sculptures!

In my native village, there was a frequent visitor called Paangyam Veerabaagu. He had a sharp nose, bright eyes and a neatly trimmed moustache, and wore a small naamam on his forehead. He had a paunch, and his teeth were stained by betel juice. Paangyam was the name of the brass instrument Veerabaagu held tucked under his armpit. At one end, it had a thin hide drumhead, and the other end was open. Attached to the centre of the hide was a thin string, which came out the other end and was tied to a slim stick. Veerabaagu would tuck the paangyam under his left armpit, hold the stick with his left hand, strum on the string with his right, and sing.

He would visit only a few specific homes. He’d begin by singing the Perandulu, a lamentation song praising the women of those homes who had sacrificed themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres as satis. This would be followed by a few other songs. Then, once the sun went down, he’d start telling stories.

The people of the neighbourhood, after returning from their fieldwork, having their bath, and eating their dinner, would gather around Paangyam Veerabaagu to listen to his stories. And what stories! Adeyappa!

The audience would be mesmerized, listening with their mouths agape, not noticing as the mosquitoes flew in and out. As a child it would seem to me that Veerabaagu had just begun the story, and almost immediately the cock would crow to announce the dawn. Very reluctantly, the women next to me would get up to wash their front yards and draw their kolams.

Veerabaagu would draw out a single story for seven long nights, sprinkling it with humourous anecdotes about the goings-on in the rest of the region.

My people have been telling stories like this for ages.

◊

Though I used to tell and listen to such tales all through my childhood, the idea of recording them came to me only after I read Boccaccio’s Decamaron. So many of those stories resembled the ones from my own soil; the Italian had seen fit to write down what people here considered too vulgar to be published.

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Once, when I was invited by Kerala University to deliver a talk on folktales, I was asked by one of the students: Will new folktales still be created, in these modern times?

A very good question! Why do you doubt it? I asked. If all the jokes that were told about our last Defense Minister, Baldev Singh, are not a part of folklore, then what are they?

The hall erupted in laughter.

I’d classify them with the ‘Singh Stories’, I said. "The Namboodri and Komuti Chettiyar stories are similar.2"

Those who have not made it big in life have always spun stories about those who have. There are plenty of tales told by the eggheads about the illiterates, and also by the illiterates about the eggheads.

In Tamil Nadu, it is common to hear stories about one caste told by members of another. Not a single group has escaped this; there are stories about each of the eighteen castes. Besides these, there are tales poking fun at zamindars, landlords, the poor, the rich, beggars, ascetics, mendicants… not even the omnipotent god Iswaran has been spared.

But these are times when the rigid structures of the caste system are slowly disintegrating. If I were to go about collecting all the various caste-related stories that exist, I would invite a lot of misunderstanding and anger. I can’t afford that, can I? In this context, what provokes the anger? Only the perception that I’m trying to denigrate some specific caste group. But this is not my intention. I am only concerned with the narrative: the mind that invented the tale, the style in which it is woven, and the expansive scope of human imagination itself!

There are three people on a thinnai outside a traveller’s inn. The one who arrived first is fast asleep. It is nighttime; all is dark. The two that arrived later, not yet feeling sleepy, sit up chatting about this and that; after a while, they lie down, but keep on talking. Irritated by their constant patter, the first man thinks of asking them to shut up; but the subject matter is very interesting, so he stays silent and listens. The other two men are busy discussing how women of all castes have affairs with men outside their own caste, without their husbands’ knowledge. No caste is left unmentioned… except their own!

It is only in our caste that such things never happen, one of them finishes.

The first one, listening, now becomes restless. He rolls over, pretending to wake up just then. The other two wait for him to sit up, then start enquiring where he is from and where he is off to. Finally, as was normal in those days, they ask to which varnam he belongs.

Having heard their gossip earlier, the man does not want to commit himself. So he hems and haws for a while, and in the end he says, Hmm; my mother is from caste A, and my father is from caste B. So you tell me, which caste do I call myself?

Saying this, he walks off, pretending he has to take a leak. He hides in the darkness to see their reaction.

The two men on the thinnai look at one another, then sigh. One of them sadly shakes his head and says, Chuck it! Our caste has gone to the dogs too. Let’s sleep.

Every caste group has stories meant to make their own caste look the best. Nevertheless, these racial stories are primarily meant to be funny, not malicious; and it’s the humour that gets us first, not the venom. It’s only later that we might understand the meanness in them. This is common to every culture. What we think of today as jokes have grown from our native, organic folk language.

There was a forward-caste man who was having fun with his wife, and the night extended longer and longer. Then a stench touched his nose. The room was dark, and though he couldn’t see anything except his wife, he could make out that someone else had come into the room.

Adiye, there is a thief hiding in this room! he exclaimed. I’ve found him out!

How? asked the wife.

Our own farts will only have the fragrance of asafoetida spice, he said. But this is a different fart smell, a cheap liquor stink!

◊

Rumours, gossip, and folktales are distinctly different from each other. Rumours are usually vicious. Gossip is always episodic. But a folktale has a clear beginning, middle and end.

The inventors of these stories range from intellectuals to common men. When we look carefully at the epics, we realize that it is impossible to trace them back to a single region or point of origin. Take the Ramayanam, for example: the story of the heirless raja comes from one place, the story of the raja conducting a yaagam to have a child comes from another, the story of the prince banished to the forest from yet another, and the story of the abducted wife from still another…. Valmiki’s accomplishment was compiling all this into one coherent text. It is normal for the harikatha performers, while retelling the epic, to extend or reduce the text, depending on the audience’s interest or time factors.

I remember a storyteller in Udukudi giving me a totally new and different interpretation for Dhraupadi’s public disrobing by Dhuryodhanan in the Mahabharatham.

It’s common for a wife who doesn’t want to have sex with her husband to blatantly lie that she is menstruating, he said. Now, Dhuryodhanan was a very big raja. Imagine how many women like Dhraupadi he would have seen! Naturally, he doubted her claim. So he demanded that she actually prove that she had her period. He merely wanted to clear his doubt!

Just see how far away this is from the standard epic!

Once there was a puppet show in our village of the episode from the Ramayanam about the burning of Lanka. It was a hot, sweltering summer; we spent the nights sleeping outside on the thinnai, on cots on the lanes, or under a tree. So when the show started, all the village folk gathered around to watch. I went too; not for the story of Raman and Sita, but for the three puppets Dhabedhar, Komaalli and Mottaiyan. They came on during the interludes to crack jokes, share local news and gossip, and sing extempore songs about the main characters. No matter how many times, or for how many hours I watched, they would never repeat themselves even once.

◊

Again, don’t assume that all folktales were invented by commoners. Here is an example:

Once upon a time there was a raja and his minister. One day, the minister said, Raja, cerebral bookish people are useless at everyday, regular jobs. They are only suited for their specific scholarly fields.

I don’t think you’re right, contended the raja. I say a genius is a genius! I challenge you to prove me wrong.

Accordingly, a logician, an astrologer, a physician, and a rhythmatist were brought to the palace. They were given a room, along with grain, rice, and spending money, and told to cook for themselves. The raja and the minister waited to watch what followed.

The four specialists had no clue about cooking. But what could they do? It was the raja’s command. The rhythmatist, after some effort, managed to light the stove and put the rice in the pot to cook. The physician set out to buy vegetables, the astrologer to cut banana leaves, and the logician to buy ghee.

The physician reached the vegetable market. There were heaps of different vegetables, but he rejected every one of them: brinjal, because it ruins an ayurvedic diet; raw banana, because it causes gas; pumpkin, because it increases bile; and drumstick, because it increases body heat. Finally, he asked for beans. But it was not the season for beans.

Do you have bitter gourd?

No, was the reply.

What kind of a vegetable market is this? he demanded. Don’t you have a single healthy vegetable? Give me pea aubergine!

No, not even that was available. Oh forget it, he thought. Let me get home and we’ll have lunch with rasam, appalam and curd. And so he returned, empty-handed.

The astrologer who had gone to get leaves for plates found a bad omen in every direction he turned. As he stepped out, a Vanniya Chettiyar came by with a pot of oil. That was the first bad omen; so he turned and walked in the opposite direction. But then he realized he was walking westward. Oh no, he said, today is Friday, and that means west is the direction of my death! So he turned back around, and walked and walked and walked, but there was no banana tree anywhere to be seen; only a lone banyan tree. Not too bad, he thought, we can eat off the banyan leaves. So he tucked in his dhoti, and started to climb the tree.

Tk-tk! said a gecko in the tree. Don’t go up!

So he waited for a long time, until he heard another gecko behind him say Okay, you can climb up now. Though not much of a tree-climber, he managed somehow to get up and pluck a few leaves. But where should he put them? He could not drop them at the base of the tree, because some members of the general voting public had fouled the area. So he tucked the leaves into his dhoti at his waist. As he started climbing down, his thighs started trembling with fear. Why did I even climb up this tree? he thought. Just then he heard another gecko call: Don’t climb down! So our astrologer stayed in the tree until sundown.

The logician bought his ghee in a leaf cup. The ghee was set hard. On his way back, the logician tipped over the cup to check if the ghee would fall out. It did not. At once, his logical mind set to work. Was the ghee holding the cup together or the cup holding the ghee? Which was supporting which? He argued for a while in support of the ghee, then switched positions to argue for the cup. At the end of the debate, he tipped over the cup to recheck. By now, the ghee had melted to liquid and it immediately drained out on the ground.

And therefore, it was the cup that was holding the ghee! he declared and came back with just the cup.

By this time, back in the room, the rice was almost boiling in the pot. The rhythmatist sat watching it. As the heat was constant, the water was bubbling rhythmically, rising and falling in time. He counted the beats; they were steady. With a smile on his face, he started a konakol, speaking every syllable in rhythm with the bubbles. He clapped along, as if to encourage the water. Then, without warning, the water switched to a slower beat.

It irked the rhythmatist. He could not tolerate bad tempo; it irritated him terribly! He tried giving the pot a hard look. It did not change. Getting angrier, he added some wood to the fire. The bubbling started to pick up speed, but then suddenly died out completely, without a proper korvai coda. Furious, the expert rhythmatist took a burning piece of firewood and whacked the pot off the stove.

The watching minister gave the raja a triumphant grin.

◊

Though what we normally define as folktales are the stories prevalent among the common folk—tales invented by the commoner, for the commoner—these stories travel to other regions and other tellers. As they travel, they gather more embellishments, more imagination, and more life, depending on the teller’s skill.

Even educated people need stories: philosophical stories, moral stories, religious propaganda stories, political propaganda stories, hagiographic stories of leaders and heroes, etc. etc.

Political propaganda stories first arrived in our nation during the anti-colonial struggle. Sixty years back, when I was a young lad, leaders of the Congress Satyagraha Movement used to visit our village. They would erect a stage, gather a crowd and tell us anti-British stories about the imperial ignorance of Indian sensibilities. This is one such story:

In London, the capital of the British Empire, a Member of Parliament once asked an Indian minister, Tell me, kind sir: What tree does rice grow on? Of course, this question came from a white man. He knew nothing about rice, had never seen a rice plant in his life. The Indian minister had never been to India himself. Though a rice-eater, he had never seen a rice plant either.

So, requesting a little time to find the answer, he sent the query to the viceroy in India. But what could the viceroy know about rice? After all he was a white man too! So he passed the question down to the governor. The poor governor, also being white, had no answer. So he asked the collector. The collector was as white as the rest of them, so he passed the question down to the deputy collector, who was an Anglo-Indian.

Now, a full-blooded white man might at least try his hand at a Tamil word or two, but an Anglo-Indian would never let even a word of an Indian language near his ear. He would touch nothing but bread. So, when he saw the query, he could not control his rage. He took the file and wrote on it: Chee, what kind of rubbish question is this? and threw it on his deputy’s desk.

The question finally reached the desk of the revenue official. He was a Tamil, who ate rice every day; he even had a small paddy field in his home town where he grew some. But the file was marked Very Important: What tree does rice grow on? As a true Indian clerk, he said to himself, "Perhaps there is a variety of rice that does grow on a tree! After all, this question has come from a White Man. He cannot be wrong! We must investigate this question thoroughly. We cannot afford to make a mistake." With that, he assigned responsibility for the investigation to the revenue inspector.

This revenue inspector was no fool either. He put the job in the hands of the judge of the subordinate court, who, not wanting to risk his own neck, made the village official responsible. Dey, go into the fields and find out what tree rice grows on. Hurry!

Now this village official was a man who was always fully boozed. As soon as he was given the order, he went straight to the toddy shop. Once he was sufficiently drunk, he swayed back towards the office. In his drunken stupor, he kept falling down and getting back up; finally he banged into a tree. He felt the tree, and realized that it was a palm tree. It must be my Goddess Maariyaatha who has put the tree in my path, he thought gratefully. He stumbled on, mumbling Palm tree, palm tree… over and over to himself, till he reached the office, where he exultantly declared, Yejamaan, I’ve got it! Rice grows on the palm tree!

Are you sure?

Have I ever lied to you, Yejamaan? Trust me. Rice does grow on the palm tree!

Since this was a state matter, the judge made the drunk village official leave his thumbprint in ink on the report. Then he sent the message to the revenue inspector, who in turn informed the revenue official. He translated it into grandiloquent English and sent it off to the deputy collector, who informed the collector, who informed the governor, who, totally relieved, informed the viceroy. When the Indian minister heard from the viceroy, he was overjoyed and waited eagerly for question hour in Parliament. There he announced to the British Parliament, The rice grain grows on the palm tree!

◊

Hagiographic tales are another sort. The subjects range from epic heroes to today’s politicians.

I’ve heard several oral folktales about Veerapandiya Kattabomman, the 16th century South Indian rebel chieftain. Here is one such story:

Once, Kattabomman, his brother Ummaitthurai and their favorite sister were escaping on horseback from the British troops. The horses sped like the wind.

Now, Kattabomman’s sister had hair that was sixteen feet long. As her horse galloped, her locks came undone and became tangled in the horse’s rear legs. The brothers knew how important it was to leave the place without being caught. But they knew not what to do. Then the sister said, Do not waste any more time, dear brothers. Hurry, chop down both the horse and me, and run. Kattabomman looked to Ummaitthurai. Immediately, Ummaitthurai, who had never disobeyed his elder brother in his life, pulled out his sword and with one stroke cut both the horse and the sister in half. The two brothers sped away again.3

When I repeated this tale to historians, most of them denied that this was a real part of Kattabomman’s life. A hagiographic tale may be invented out of ardent love for the hero. Even a modern icon like the first Prime Minister of our independent nation, Jawaharlal Nehru, has not escaped this.

When Nehru was a student in London, Prince Edward, the son of King George the Fifth, was his classmate. Nehru had a car with him then. It was the costliest car in the world, plated all over with gold and encrusted with pearls and nine kinds of precious gems. One day, Nehru gave a ride to the prince in his car. It was only after that ride that the prince realized what decrepit automobiles his family had in their royal garages. After school, the prince went back and demanded a similar car from his father. King George the Fifth said, You idiot’s son, you think we can afford to buy such cars? Nehru is the son of the crorepathi of all crorepathis! You and I don’t match up to him. He went on to tell about the Nehru family’s wealth. They do not launder their clothes in India; instead, they send them to Paris. Every day a ship leaves India with their dirty clothes, while another leaves Paris with the laundered ones. Now do you understand how rich they are? Do not even try to compete with him, my son!

◊

And then there are tales whose origin can only be guessed at.

When I was very, very young, the woman who sold brooms to my grandmother used to tell one such tale.

Once upon a time there was a woman who was a mother of grown-up sons. Her husband had died a long time ago. One day, when the mother and her sons were gathering wood in the forest, her sari pallu got caught in a thorny bush. Strangely, she didn’t try to untangle it. Without turning around, she whispered in a shy, coy voice, Let go machchan, let go. My sons are watching.

When the sons saw this, they thought: Aha! Our mother wants a man. And so they got her married.

In an earlier period of human history, the concept of marriage did not exist. A woman was free to find unlimited pleasure with whichever men she desired. She was the more powerful. Gradually there was a shift, and she was disciplined and controlled by marriage. Perhaps the story above was one which appeared during the period of transition.

◊

These are stories invented by our ancestors; they are our wealth. They reveal the tension caused by highly moralized sexuality. They also help us to appreciate story structure, story line, the scope of human imagination, the dexterity of language, the range of dialects and human psychology. Let us continue to gather these stories and tell them to the outside world.

I must admit, though, that