Folk Tales from India : The Sunderbans : Vol: I

"Our lives would have been poor and lustreless without the fascinating tales told by our mothers and grandmothers. From custodians of these tales, we will become passers on. We may sing them or paint them, draw them or act them or narrate them. There are riddles to send down that last morsel of food, lullabies to send away wakefulness to the land of dreams, ballads for love and tales of righteousness when we lose sight of goodness. It is a fascinating, horrifying, piteous, hilarious and dramatic world filled with kings, animals, fools, misers, hunters, shepherds, ghosts, magic, demons, fairies, Gods, local heroes, the wicked and the righteous.

No one knows how this world was created. One supposes that it gets created everytime there is a teller and a listener. Folklore enables us to see how intelligence confronts power, compassion confronts wealth and women subvert a patriarchal world. While not marginalising politics, economics or success, it stresses each time that all these are less important than the mastery of living. Folklore gently separates for us information, knowledge and wisdom, according most importance to the last. It gives us the skill to deal with the inherent ambiguity, messiness, complexity and absurdity of life's twists and turns, for participating in humanity's struggle for greater meaning. It points out the weakness of knowledge without ethics, the visible without the invisible and analysis without synthesis. Indeed, folklore is mostly about the art of living advocate through a moral order.

In this volume we invite you to enter the verdant world of the Sunderbans in lower Bengal, wade through its mangrove swamps, meet its famous tigers and some of its heroes and Gods. If Manik Pir is the Gentle Fakir who combated the wicked villagers of his time, Bada Khan Ghazi is the warrior-saint who staked his life for love and won the hearts of the Dalits. Banbibi, who fought Dakshin Ray, Lord of Tigers, is the darling of the Sunderbans and is still the Patron Goddess of the forest and Bishalakshmi is the Saviour of the fishing communities. All this and much more awaits you inside!"