Preserving heritage buildings makes sense, but preserving rich folklore is intelligent!
Kashmir has a long and cherished history of 5000 years. Rightly have some authors described it as “the mother of all civilizations”. Kashmir has been the highest learning point of Sanskrit and Persian where early Indo-Aryanic civilization has originated and flourished. Ladakh on the other side has been the highest living centre of Tantrayan Buddhism. Similarly, Jammu has been the axis of Rajas and Maharajas, who have enriched the cultural, historical and social bonds of all these diverse ethnic and linguistic sections of the state. The ancient archaeological monuments and remnants of the past are the true reflections of the rich cultural traditions of our State. Kashmir has a rich heritage of poets, writers, philosophers, intellectuals and craftsmen, who have earned a name at the international level.
Over the past few decades, I have been witnessing attempts at different levels to promote, propagate and protect this rich cultural heritage of our state. To some extent, these attempts have triggered a level of consciousness among the state subjects about their past – culture and heritage. However, amid all this campaigning I found a small but significant miss of our folktales – one of the beautiful aspects of our past. These Kashmiri folklores/tales have almost faced extinction as these have neither been promoted, propagated nor protected.
PAST
I remember my childhood days when my siblings and I would surround our father in the evenings to listen to his stories from the past. These stories included Kashmiri folklore that my father had heard from his father and grandfather.
Among the tales he used to narrate us were stories of “Watal-Hume”: these were funny stories from a particular place called Watal-Hume, known for their humor, which I am sure very few people of my generation would know.
Other stories included Alif Laila , Kashmiri stories like; Haba Khatoon, Heemal Nagraj, Aknandun ; fairy tales, Panchtantra stories, Zainul Abideen, Mahadev Bisht etc. All these stories were aptly modified by my father in line with our rich tradition of culture and heritage so that we get at least an idea of our roots.
The habit of story-listening enabled us to develop a flavor for literature besides helping us to succeed in our coursework over a period of time.
We had been assigned a particular timing and a week-long schedule to our story time. During those days we used to love frequent power outages as we could enjoy listening to the stories for extended durations.
Historically speaking, Kashmir has always remained a rich hub of story-tellers in the past. Even my grandfather and great-grandfather used to listen to stories from professional storytellers who, as a practice, would be invited at home by affluent families of Kashmir.
So, listening to storytellers happened to be the best pastime for them. Notably, these professional story tellers would be paid by passengers travelling by trains to different destinations.
It’s worth to share here that the first collection of Kashmiri folktales in English was written by J. Hinton Knowles towards the end of the last century. According to him, “Many of these tales are probably purely Kashmiri in origin, while others are undoubtedly variants of popular tales current in India and other parts, which have been adapted and modified to suit the language, style of thought, and social usages of the country. To European folktales, also, several of these stories will be found to have great resemblance.”
J. Hinton Knowles who coined the term folklore in 1846 in his book “Folklore of Kashmir” writes: “Kashmiri literature has not been surpassed in fertility by any other country in the world. The folklores and folktales have always remained an essential part of every culture for ages. They are part of an oral tradition, meaning that they originated in the era before literacy and passed down verbally from generation to generation. While folktales are not only entertaining, they also play an important role in passing along core values or character traits.”
Remarkably, another collection of folktales – ‘Hatim’s Tales’ – by Sir Auriel Stein, is a collection of tales in prose and verse recited in Kashmiri by a person namely Hatim Tilwoun, who was an oilman by profession. Hatim was a Kashmiri folktales teller from Sindh valley in Kashmir. Although illiterate, he was able to recite the stories with amazing accuracy and in perfect order even if asked after a long time to recite the certain passages again. His tales are a part of the heritage of rich Kashmiri folklore and were drawn from history, mythology, traditional narratives and original stories devised by Hatim himself.
PRESENT
Preservation of our folklore is dying its last breath but no one seems interested in preserving /passing it on to our next generation. Folktales play an important role in our lives. It is what keeps us attached to our religion, traditions and beliefs.
We grew up listening to our rich folktales. But, today these folktales have lost audience to the power of internet, Television, smart phones and social media. Both storytellers and their audience have lost taste of carrying forward the traditional folktales.
Even as I attempt to narrate a Kashmiri folktale to my 7-year-old son, he hardly pays any attention and poses sleepy. He prefers to watch his favorite cartoon networks like Tom and Jerry, Doraemon, Shin-Chain, Barbie, etc. and a boom of other cartoons that I hardly have any idea than he does.
I was wondering why and what has changed children in general, especially, in the age group of 2 -10 years who watch cartoons ardently. Interestingly, they love to watch cartoons on TV even before they learn to speak.
When I researched a bit more to inquire about other children of my friends, family and acquaintances I found the story was not different from mine. Children love watching cartoons rather than listening to stories, no matter where they belong to. Not only that, they prefer to buy their clothes and accessories that are labeled with their favorite cartoons.
Take for example Barbie doll, a famous American toy and a fashion doll, whose famous punch line is ‘Every girls dream’. Barbie has been an important part of the fashion doll market for over fifty years.
There are crazy youngsters who cannot dream of life without Barbie. Every little girl wants to be like Barbie. There are crazy youngsters who are particular about Barbie clothes and accessories.
Barbie is 58 now but the aging hasn’t taken the sheen of the product, unlike the folklore/folktales of our old culture, that has undergone a major degradation with time.
Similarly, there are other cartoons also like Doraemon, Bheem, Mickey Mouse etc that lure our children so much that they actually live in those characters. Ask any child, a grown up or a teenager about Kashmiri folklore or folktales, he /she won’t be able to comprehend anything.
FUTURE
Prospects of reviving this beautiful part of our culture are not bleak. Today, we have state-of-the-art technology which can be used to restore the glory of our folktales in line with modern times. We can take cue from cartoon characters and modify our traditional characters driving the folktales in a new form acceptable to our young minds.
Our folklore can be used as a tool to help us retain our traditional values and culture. What if our children are not intrigued by our folklores? We should have the potential to represent the old culture and tradition in a modern way so that our children can relate to it easily. This would help them to become culturally and traditionally grounded but at the same time can keep them up with the modern world. But we have so far failed in our endeavors to do so.
Precisely, if we want to pass our rich folktales to our next generation we need to adopt smarter ways to incorporate the richness of our old culture into our young and inquisitive minds. A person who is well informed about his own cultural values can only effectively relate with other cultures otherwise the repercussions can lead to cultural identity crisis.
In succinct, spending time and hefty sums to preserve culture and heritage should necessarily accommodate initiatives to revive culture of folktales in modern form. Preserving heritage buildings makes sense but preserving our rich folklore is intelligent!
The author is an Associate Editor at INS
