Oral tales establish relationships between storytellers and their
listeners. Yet most printed collections of folktales contain only
stories, stripped of the human contexts in which they are told. If
storytellers are mentioned at all, they are rarely consulted about
what meanings they see in their tales. In this innovative book,
Indian-American anthropologist Kirin Narayan reproduces twenty-one
folktales narrated in a mountain dialect by a middle-aged Indian
village woman, Urmila Devi Sood, or "Urmilaji." The tales are set
within the larger story of Kirin Narayan's research in the
Himalayan foothill region of Kangra, and of her growing friendship
with Urmilaji Sood. In turn, Urmilaji Sood supplements her tales
with interpretations of the wisdom that she discerns in their
plots. At a moment when the mass-media is flooding through rural
India, Urmilaji Sood asserts the value of her tales which have been
told and retold across generations. As she says, "Television can't
teach you these things."
These tales serve as both moral instruction and as beguiling
entertainment. The first set of tales, focussing on women's
domestic rituals, lays out guidelines for female devotion and
virtue. Here are tales of a pious washerwoman who brings the dead
to life, a female weevil observing fasts for a better rebirth, a
barren woman who adopts a frog and lights ritual oil lamps, and a
queen who remains with her husband through twelve arduous years of
affliction. The women performing these rituals and listening to the
accompanying stories are thought to bring good fortune to their
marriages, and long life to their relatives. The second set of
tales, associated with passing the time around the fire through
long winter nights, are magical adventure tales. Urmilaji Sood
tells of a matchmaker who marries a princess off to a lion, God
splitting a boy claimed by two families into two selves, a prince's
journey to the land of the demons, and a girl transformed into a
bird by her stepmother.
In an increasingly interconnected world, anthropologists'
authority to depict and theorize about distant people's lives is
under fire. Kirin Narayan seeks solutions to this crisis in
anthropology by locating the exchange of knowledge in a respectful,
affectionate collaboration. Through the medium of oral narratives,
Urmilaji Sood describes her own life and lives around her, and
through the medium of ethnography Kirin Narayan shows how broader
conclusions emerge from specific, spirited interactions. Set
evocatively amid the changing seasons in a Himalayan foothill
village, this pathbreaking book draws a moving portrait of an
accomplished woman storyteller. Mondays on the Dark Night of the
Moon offers a window into the joys and sorrows of women's changing
lives in rural India, and reveals the significance of oral
storytelling in nurturing human ties.
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