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Vikramaditya on a scooter
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Harlequin's dramatisation of Poile Sengupta's Vikram and Vetal was in keeping with her modern rendering of the centuries-old stories
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SIGNS OF THE TIMES Connecting with the children was the priority.
The king wore a white T-shirt, a gilded turban, and a permanent smirk. He sipped imaginary coffee from a white porcelain cup. "The wise King Vikramaditya, they call me," he announced, "the good King Vikramaditya." An old man gifted him strange fruit that turned into gemstones, and set him on a quest for a corpse hanging from a tamarind tree. The king began his journey to the forest — on a scooter. He sat on the pillion while the old man switched on the lights and honked. The children roared.
New expression
Harlequin Entertainment's dramatised reading of excerpts from Poile Sengupta's Vikram and Vetal (released by Arundhati Nag at Ranga Shankara last Saturday) was in keeping with her modern rendering of the centuries-old stories. Her version is narrated by a 12-year-old girl spending her summer holidays with her activist grandmother. When Puffin (Penguin's children's division) commissioned Poile to do the book, she knew she had to do something different with the popular series that had already found its way into film, television, cartoons and comics, not to mention books in several Indian languages. Penguin itself had published The Throne of Vikramaditya. "They were the throne stories," said Poile, "about a cowherd who sat on a flat stone and started getting wise."
The Vikram-Vetal series, which appears to be a part of Somadeva's voluminous Kathasaritasagara, was not intended for children, just as the Panchatantra wasn't. During her research, Poile found Vikram-Vetal stories that dealt with sati, promiscuous men, unfaithful wives — not exactly the stuff of children's literature. "There are so many variations, versions... " She shortlisted 25 which formed what she felt was "the core — and that's just my surmise". From these she picked 13 for her book.
Hilarious use
Poile Sengupta and Arundhati Nag at the launch
At the book launch, Harlequin's Vivek Madan and Munish Sharma made it a point to connect with the children in the audience. Their use of the scooter (which Parnab Mukherjee had used to ominous effect in his play Workshopping Kurukshetra in My Graveyard) created much hilarity, especially in the end when the Vetal rode off on it and the king yelled for a taxi. When they read excerpts from the story of "The Talented Brothers" they asked the little ones which of the two brothers was the wiser and did a quick vote count before they revealed the answer. Those who voted for the younger brother appeared to be younger than those who voted for the older, leaving one to conclude that the choice depended more on the age of the voter than on reasoning!
Many levels
One does not expect great powers of deduction from three and four-year-olds. They may not fully comprehend a story like "The Right to Property" but they can certainly be entranced by evil spirits and islands beneath the sea. And that's the charm of the book: it can be read at different levels. Older children would appreciate the parallel narratives that slide into one another; the stories the girl reads mysteriously echo her own life. Poile points out that the Vikram-Vetal stories deal with justice, and governance, and right and wrong, and plain commonsense. But, like many other Indian stories, they carry a whiff of ambiguity and leave room for argument.
C.K. MEENA
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