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Around the Hearth — Khasi Legends
Nongkynrih’s wonderful selection of 20 Khasi legends—full of magic and fantasy— portray allegorically the Khasi philosophy. Respect for man and nature is the key to God, for the pantheistic Khasis. Incorporating fables, beast fables, fairy tales, weaving together various threads: tragedy, pathos, romance, humour, irony, portraying the mortals, the sun, the moon, the trees and animals rubbing shoulders with super natural beings, the anthology Around the Hearth is a real feast for fantasy lovers. The handful of beast fables paints both humorous and horrifying pictures of animals indulging in both funny and sharp practices. In the Animal Dance Festival, the use of caricature to describe the appearance and characteristic traits of animals is really fantastic. A real thriller, Ka Nam and the Tiger gives a curious explanation of the eclipse of the sun and the moon. Ka Nam, a beautiful damsel, in her bid to protect herself from the guiles of "The cruel bully" tiger falls a prey to the magical, malignant powers of Hynroh, the great toad. The mighty sun sets Ka Nam free, raising, in turn, fury of Hynroh, which results in eclipse of the sun and her brother the moon. Tiger and toad, metaphors of evil and cruelty, cast a pall of terror. The union and separation between the ravishingly beautiful fairies/spirits and fallible mortals is the fascinating subject of a couple of fairy-tale romances. A broom, metaphor of broken promise, brings the nymph’s sudden departure from the mortal world in Ren and River Nymph. Ka Pahsyntiew, an ecstatic romantic tale, tinged with a note of despair, allegories the tension between Pahsyntiew (supernatural) and sate (mortal). Fables, in which personified natural objects and animals enact foibles and follies of human conduct, instruct by delighting. In The Sun and The Peacock, the situational irony is at its peak. The peacock parts himself from his devoted wife, the sun—charmed and blinded by distant illusionary beauty of queen; no other than the mustard plant. The moral is: distance leads enchantment to the view. The Sun and The Moon condemns incest portraying the bitter split between siblings, the sun and the moon. The fable attributes the pale, hazy light of the moon, to the ash flung by the heated sun on the blushed moon, banishing him from the world of light to that of dark. Written in reader-friendly prose, with uncomplicated linear narrative structures, the fantastic, exotic legends resonate with the basic ethos of Khasi life, and human emotions.
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HUMAN
communities invariably make use of myths/legends to explain beliefs and
natural phenomena. As a matter of fact, the Khasis, a tribe of
North-East India, have a rich oral tradition of story-telling as story
has always been their only route, to grasp the incomprehensible and to
impart moral lessons, entertainingly, to the young Khasis "around
the hearth", says the Prelude.
