Thursday, March 7, 2019

Raja Thatha (Story man) the story teller


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


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

1,Valmiki  Ramayana  (Sanskrit) http://englishvalmikiramayanam.blogspot.com/
2.Kamba  Ramayanam (Tamil) http://englishkambaramayanam.blogspot.com/

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/