Raja Thatha (story man) the story
teller
By
Raja Thatha
( Dedicated to my daughter Meera who
brought my story
telling skill on line)
1.What is that in
life that motivated you to know more
stories and collect them?
I belong to Kerala
where telling stories used to
play a great role in life . Ancient
arts like Padakam, Chakyar Koothu
and Ottam thullal and their modification Kadha Kalakshepam all are mainly about story telling in a conversational style . Because of it at least in olden times , the conversation
of most of the people laced round stories. Any one wanted to drive home
a point in a conversation used to tell a story. This greatly attracted me and so I did collect as a young boy several stories for
illustrating my talks .Later when I grew
up , I became a compulsive reader and a great book worm. Whenever I read a new story I remembered it and later
started modifying them to illustrate
my conversation.
2.What were the
sources for the many stories that you know?
Initially the elders of my native village including my father . When
I grew up , I read all the Hindu puranas and Upanishads and also attended the story telling arts whenever I could. I read Brihad Katha
Manjari, Pancha Thanthra , Arabian
Nights , Vikramadithya stories initially
and later all available English folk tales like Grimm’s fairy tales, Anderson fairly
tales , Abbots folk tales, Greek mythology , Bible
,Maha Bharatha, Bhagwatha, Alice
in Winderland and tamil children magazine called Ambuli Mama.
Any story I read I converted them
in to my environment and remembered.
Later on I read thousands of fiction books in Malayalam, Tamil and English.
Age has indeed blunted my memory
and I have forgotten many of
them. But still I like to illustrate my talk with my altered story collection.
3.Are there any
different form of story telling that has
attracted you , which you feel are very
powerful.
The Harikatha form
of story telling that came from
SAurashtra, The theru koothu form of
story telling of Tamil Nadu and the Katha Kalakshepam form of story telling of Kerala have
greatly attracted me . They are very powerful , focused , simple and
straight forward method of
telling people that people should be good .
4.Grand parents
are no longer the story tellers
in our households and story telling has become diversified in many ways,
Do you feel that story telling is more effective with emotional bonding?
Though I did
learnt stories from my father and have been an effective story teller to my grand children , I have great
respect to the art of story telling by great artists .
Those artists did not rely on a emotional bond
but with great speed
created a bond with audience and became one of them. I have
great regard to those artists. Story telling art or the method of story telling might
have changed but essentially it is still the same aimed at
entertaining kids and teaching them the
realties of life . Earlier our method
was not fashioned based on the psychology of the listeners and possibly the new method
tries to do it.
5.What
attempts have you made to preserve
this art?
1, I Have written down many stories
that I know and my daughter converted it in to a web site .You
will find about
100 stories written by me
2.I have tried to
illustrate several tamil
and Malayalam proverb I know by spinning
stories for them. I am very
happy tell you that these
are being used to teach
our culture as reflected by proverbs
in a school in Coimbatore
b.Malayalam proverbs
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/5819682/malyalam-proverbs-raja-thathas-corner/3
3. From early age
I was fascinated by
Vikramadithya stories ie stories told to
Bhoja Raja by the 32
dolls. The only place you can
read all of them in English is my web site https://vikramadhithya.blogspot.com/2016/10/table-of-contents-of-stories-of.html
4.My daughter
wanted the world not to loose
my story telling style and I
have recorded two of them
5.The first story
ever written IN india is Ramayana. This story has always
fascinated me .I have dedicated lots and lots
of time in translating Ramayana
written by three master story tellers
in three different languages.You
can see them
2.Kamba Ramayanam (Tamil)
http://englishkambaramayanam.blogspot.com/
3.Adyathma Ramayanam(Malayalam) http://rajathathas.blogspot.com/2012/05/preface-to-adhyatma-ramayanam-of.html
6. I have told and
retold several stories
that affect human culture in to poems
You will find
hundreds of them in https://rajathathablog.blogspot.com/
2 comments:
unable to access http://stotraratna.sathyasaibababrotherhood.org/
Nice post .. Thanks by
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