Most of the Kashmiri youth born in the last decades of the last century or earlier are aware of the famous folktale of “gagur te gager” – a married couple of mice. In brief, the tale goes like this: the male mouse (husband) whilst removing the snow from the roof of the house finds a dried vegetable and asks his wife to make a delicious dish out of it. However, the friends of the female mouse (the wife), tasting the dish for her, end up eating all of it, leaving the wife all distraught. When the husband saw that there was no dish prepared for him he flung a utensil towards his wife leaving her with a ripped off ear. The wife, leaving the house behind, headed on to a tailor to sew her ear so that she may return back to her parents’ house. It is here that the journey of the wife begins. The tailor demands sewing thread and for this she needs cotton. To get cotton she needs yet another item. This chain continues through various stages such as animal dung, grass (fodder), land, sickle, blacksmith, coal, wood, fire, pot, earth and lastly a mound (heaped pile of earth and gravel). Whilst extracting the requisite amount of earth (to get other items so that she could finally get her ear sewn), the mound of earth collapsed upon her, resulting in her tragic death. The husband comes to know about it and the story ends with his mourning.
What does this story tell us (on a psychological plane as folktales have a multi-dimensional reality to them)? The immediate impression that one gets from the very constitution of the story is the inculcation of the intricate meaning of everything minute; even the smallest, seemingly insignificant things in nature around us, have their own lived lives with significant detail. The adoption of the symbolism of mice with their own home and preparing meals should be lost to none. This creates a certain sensibility in children which is of paramount importance i.e. seeing everything in nature with a certain proximate interface; seeing meaning and purpose in everything. This nourishes and strengthens the sensibility of “relationality” among children; “as I have got a family, so do others” – this creates a feeling of connectedness in human’s “lived world” engendering ethics towards the “other”.
This is the significance of folktales (& myths) that they create a certain sensibility in children. As mobile phones gradually replace all the traditional forms of entertainment, the sensibilities also change. Digital phantasm has become a new “mythology” for children. Our new sensibility is the sensibility of clickbait. World is automated to nothingness. This will have disastrous consequences in the long run. The arts and the folktales create a certain subtle sensibility and both of them today are largely missing from the lives of our young generation.
Coming back, what are the other possible lessons that are implicit in the story? Everything is connected; this is what the child learns. The nature is an organic whole. Everything has a role to play. Thread comes from cotton which itself has another source and so on and so forth. Again, there is a creation of a certain sensibility; this is what old folktales do – they transform our vision. The world does not change (physically), but rather, the way we perceive the world changes – due to which the erstwhile hidden or obscure features of reality are now lit up –and this transformed vision naturally transforms our actions and behaviour too. This transforms one’s character.
Human being is nothing but a certain mode of consciousness. One does not identify oneself with one’s legs or nose but a certain conscious awareness such as one’s likes and dislikes, understanding, perspectives, personality type, moods, memories, state of being, etc. The quality of consciousness decides one’s quality of life. A spiteful volatile consciousness, for example, translates into a miserable life whereas a patient, calm and composed consciousness leads to a joyous life. Folktales address the very constitution of child’s consciousness. It leads to a fundamental transformation which goes a long way in positively benefiting a child.
The end of the story as a tragedy (i.e. the death of the wife) is noteworthy. Worldly life itself is a struggle and thus happy endings need not create lazy or “infantile” mentality which always expects the world to function according to one’s own wishes. This can really prepare a growing adult to face the world which is a plane of strife and struggle. Moreover, tragic stories do have a cathartic effect; a sort of a shock therapy. They teach us to value the most immediately available things and relations in our lives which otherwise go unnoticed. Tragedies wake us up to the “ordinary” which in actual fact is deeply “extraordinary” – only if we attend to things. Again, this is nothing but a fundamental transformation of consciousness (or perception – way of seeing reality). This “technology” of personal transformation is the age old wisdom which today’s human so direly needs.
Besides this, such folktales are carriers of culture from one generation to the next. They store languages, phrases, sensibilities, cultural values and other related things. Apart from entertainment, they serve educational purposes as well. One can see, in the above folktale, a form of scientific account of the technical knowhow which is being transmitted to the young generation to educate them regarding the relevant crafts and skills prevalent in their times. There is also, however, a socio-cultural-historical criticism as well that lay dormant in these folktales. All of us remember our grandmothers and mothers narrating this folktale to us. There was a participatory immediacy to their narration, being women themselves. The way they may specially relate to the protagonist, the wife, in the story. The story lays out the various kinds of ordeals that the womenfolk go through; the struggles in their everyday household lives. Folktales reflect cultures both from within and without which very few things can successfully do.
Let us now make few preliminary remarks on the psychology of folktales. Folktales (which are, in a way, subsets of myths if we follow Joseph Campbell’s reading) have deeper wisdom encoded within them, as we have briefly pointed out above. There is a difference, however, between myths and folktales; myths besides having a grander scale serve a religious function which folktales usually do not take up. There are primarily four functions of myths which Campbell outlines that we need not go into right now. For now, let us focus on one particular function of myths (& by extension of fairytales too) and that is inculcating a certain wisdom of life. An ancient tale of “a human flying horses in sky”, for example, is not “nonsense” but rather it refers to a human if “in control of desires (horses) i.e. lower self” can attain spiritual/intellectual “flight”.
Myths & folktales are stories and stories are fundamental constituents of human life. Our own lives are nothing but stories. Human being primarily is an “acting being” i.e. one who is always at some point “A” trying to get at some other point “B”. No matter which stage of life human being is “travelling” in, the fact of “travel” in itself i.e. moving from one task to another is a constant in human life. Therefore, the fundamental fabric of our life/being is “story” i.e. once upon a time I was “there” then I left for a “journey” and got “here”. In the above folktale also, we can see, it is fundamentally a journey that the wife goes through. Therefore, myths/stories/fairytales primarily attune to our most fundamental mode of being i.e. “story”. Every individual lived life is a story in its own way. Why are old folktales populated by weird creatures and fancy events? This is because in this life’s journey/story, many unexpected things may happen (and they do happen) i.e. the “unknown” may stick its head out which is symbolized as the “chaos” (uncharted territory) of the “underworld” in old myths or represented as “snakes” or “dragons” because in reptilian form snakes/dragons convey nocturnal surprise and dark unknown. Interested readers may look up Joseph Campbell’s brilliant work on this subject called “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”.
What is this wisdom that ancient folktales try to teach? Over the course of centuries, human beings have observed multiple patterns of their own behaviour. They observed them, learned from them and then depicted in stories as to which sets of behaviour (& consciousness) lead to good life and what sorts of intentions & actions end up creating a “mess” in our lives – this is wisdom as to how one may navigate through life’s uncertainty besides bringing about a personal transformation. Since human being’s primary mode of being is “decision” or “action” or “movement” or “story”, therefore, what attains primacy is “value structure” rather than material technology. This wisdom cannot be cooked up by one individual within one generation; it is for this reason that Traditional wisdom becomes indispensable.
Not much work has been done on myths and fairytales in our part of the world. A compilation of Kashmiri folktales followed by a psychological and philosophical commentary is long overdue.
(The Author has done masters in Philosophy from Centre for Philosophy, JNU and is currently pursuing PhD from the same Institution. Feedback: [email protected])
