Once upon a time...
By Janaki Bhatt

IT is often said that story telling is the oldest of all arts known to man. In India, it has survived into the electronic age through dadima-nanima (grandmothers’) tales, largely because of widespread illiteracy. But in urban centres, the oral tradition is almost dead.

Poet-filmmaker Gulzar has now taken it upon himself to revive this tradition. In Karadi Katha, an audio book in Hindi for schoolchildren, he presents the fascinating tales of Panchatantra, rewritten and narrated in a style that is unmistakably his own.

"I agreed to do this audio book specially for urban children who, because of their education in English, are fast losing touch with words and concepts which are suffused with the sounds and aroma of the earth they stand on," says the ace wordsmith.

Gulzar’s empathy with children is well known. His Kitaab, which chronicles the angst and aspirations of a little boy, is regarded a celluloid classic. Likewise, his tele-serials like Potli Baba ki and Guchchhe were hot favourites with young viewers.

Again, his lyrics for the Lakdi ki kathi song from Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom in 1980, is still regarded a chartbuster and had brought him a national award. Few artistes can think and express themselves in a language that children can relate to.

"He has a way with kids," acknowledges Parashuram Narayan, producer of the audio book who roped in Gulzar for the project. "I know he is a busy man. But I couldn’t think of anybody else who has the facility of words and commands a Santa Claus-like following among children."

Narayan points out that Karadi Katha is a unique project aimed at offering the young ones an "opportunity to make friends with new words and images", even as they are listening to audio cassette, which reverberates with the squeals of a monkey or the roar of a swollen river.

The audio book has been the epicenter of Parashuram’s life for quite some time. The engineer-turned-musician who played the mrindangam for Laxmikant-Pyarelal through several Hindi blockbusters has been working on the project since 1966.

His sister-in-law, Shobha Vishwanath, came up with the idea initially. While teaching in an institute for the visually impaired in Pune, she thought of recording stories for children so as to stimulate their imagination and introduce them to a heritage of Indian story telling.

"After much deliberation, we thought of offering children a new experience in the oral tradition," says Parashuram who is packaging the audio cassette with an illustrated book to enable listeners to keep pace with the flow of the narrative.

The Parashuram family has been "fully involved" in the project and had launched a recording label, Sky Music, to handle its execution. Karadi, the principal character from whom the book derives its name, is a bear who takes the narrative through its twists and turns.

Narayan and Vishwanath dipped into the treasure trove of India’s oral folk lore and retrieved quite a few stories which would otherwise have been lost in time. Some stories had to be "adapted and edited" to hold children’s attention.

Cine actor Naseruddin Shah agreed to do the first double-package of two stories in English and the cassette was released in music stores. Within a month, a leading music store in Bombay placed a repeat order of 500 cassettes.

Before long stores, which had refused to market the cassette-and-book package, volunteered to stock the product, A Hindi version with Saeed Jaffery’s narration was released "to test the waters". The response was equally encouraging.

"We are absolute upstarts in this business," chuckles Narayan, who explains how he plans to turn Karadi Katha into a viable proposition. "We produce 25,000 copies to keep the project going. A Toronto company has been roped in to undertake the distribution in the USA and Canada."

For Gulzar, the challenge was to make Karadi the bear speak in a language that holds wide appeal. "There are lots of words in Hindi which, like some rare bird, are on the verge of extinction," he says, citing examples of expressions like utaavali (haste) and sabz (lush green).

"I think such tape and book projects will help revive these words," he adds. "I do not know how the stories will appeal to the post-1990s generation. But somewhere down the line, we will have succeeded in our bid to keep India’s oral tradition alive." —MF