Stories from the Soil helps you reconnect with your land through folktales  

Vikram Sridhar
Vikram Sridhar

Folktales are prized possessions of any culture, often preserved only through oral traditions. Storytellers Sowmya Rajan Srinivasan and Vikram Sridhar are bringing these tales to the fore at the event, Stories from the Soil. 


“It will be like a jugalbandi between Sowmya and me,” explains Vikram, adding, “We are both from Southern Indian states and the stories are about the region and its traditions.” Vikram will perform a few folktales from Karna-taka and Tamil Nadu, including one by AK Ramanujan called A Flowering Tree. 
Vikram feels folktales are often restricted to children’s stories in today’s day and age, “As adults, we usually read stories that are Western in origin and format. But folktales can also be for adults,” he claims. These tales can take many roles such as mothers giving advice to daughters, tales between husbands and wives and so on. These stories are mature and have deep metaphors in them. Nature plays a deep role, be it through animals, plants or even natural elements. And each tale is a reflection of the society and region that they originate from. 

Sowmya Rajan Srinivasan
Sowmya Rajan Srinivasan


Many of the tales they will perform at the event only exist as oral narratives, passed down through generations. “One of the stories I’m performing, called Before and Behind You, is a story I heard from my father-in-law and the other one, based on a popular Tamil idiom, is what I heard from my grandmother,” reveals Sowmya. The stories are best experienced as a live performance, and even have a few songs in them. The event was conceptualised over a conversation that the two storytellers had about community and nativity. 


Rs.150. Tomorrow, 7.30 pm. At Atta Galatta, Koramangala. Details: 41600677

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