Everyone’s Story

Khan also tells the story in his essay,also titled Kiski Kahani,in the anthology. Anjana,a monkey,is telling a bedtime story to her naughty son Hanumana. “Her song is a tale about the mighty Rama. As time passes,Anjana reaches a part in her great tale when Rama met Hanumana,” said Khan. “But the little monkey is now baffled and asks his mother,‘I am here,so how can I be there,meeting Rama?’,” he said.

“The answer which Anjana gives to her son is perhaps one of the simplest ways to understand the epic. She says,‘Time is a wheel that moves endlessly through the ages,ending where it began,only to end again.’ And that is why the Ramayana is still so relevant,” said Khan,adding that he was “Ramayanafied” several years ago and still laughs at what the monkeys did in Madhuvana.

Kiski Kahani is a compilation of essays by 19 authors,including the controversial essay written in 1985 by late linguist A K Ramanujan,which was dropped by the Academic Council of Delhi University in 2011.

Documentary filmmaker Moushumi Basu’s essay about Sita is about women in rural Bengal,who sing songs that barely hide their anger against Rama for being unjust to Sita. Writer and translator Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s essay talks about her great-aunt,who had given a modern twist to the Ramayana in the form of desultory,household letters,written by Sita.

Be it modern filmmaker Nina Paley,who made a witty animated film titled Sita Sings The Blues (2008) or “Nirbhaya”,the 23-year-old girl from Delhi who was gang-raped last year,many characters are analysed in this 172-page anthology. “The story of Ramayana has been told and retold many times. Kiski Kahani: the Ramayana Project was an 18-month long multidisciplinary venture to explore the pluralism of the Ramayana in the Indian subcontinent and this book is a culmination of that project,” said Khan.