All this against the wishes of a sorrowful father whose job it was to kill the women in the morning.” Alf Layla stepped on to the carpet and flew to Damscus and Cairo winning admirers everywhere.But it had now become so famous that people began to ask questions, “Where are you from, what are your origins, who are your parents?” Scholars came to probe and examine Alf Layla, often tearing pieces of its paper carpet. It now flew to Europe where a Frenchman taught it French. “Don’t you understand I am an orphan? Those who go looking for my parents will only find themselves. Alf Layla was now feted across Europe. I am the offspring of your own dreams and longings. In the process, Arabian stories got added to the collection many of them set in Baghdad during the reign of the great caliph, Haroun-al-Rashid.Kathakar symbolised the universality of storytelling around the world.The custom OEM pencil universality of these stories is best illustrated by a framing story that Scheherzade tells the sultan. But what would you do if you were compelled to tell a story because your life depended on it? Such a dilemma was faced by Scheherazade, the daughter of the vizier to the sultan Schahriar.India too, has had a close connection with The Arabian Tales. She had acquired the reputation of a reader and a scholar and in her, we have our first example of a bookish heroine. In this way, the sultan is forced to invite her again the next night in order to hear the rest of the story. Thus, Scheherazade gains a reprieve for one night and this continues for a thousand and one nights. But more importantly, this fragment is evidence that the stories of The Arabian Nights had been written up, sold, bought and even reused.Storytelling is an art. While today, Antoine Galland’s translation into French is the more widely used text, Richard Burton’s own translation was published in Banaras in 1895-6. Just be careful and don’t tear it. To be sure, many of the tellers used props like harps, a bamboo stick, ankle bells and even a didgeridoo, a musical instrument from hollowed-out tree trunks, to make their performances even more effective. The fund of stories that she relates to the sultan every night always leave him hanging for more , to know the ending. For actors like Manoj Vajpayee and the singer Mohit Chauhan, it was reassertion of their identity with storytelling that could hold the attention of an audience that was otherwise so used to visual depiction of stories on a screen.Scheherzade’s storytelling sessions were to have a happy ending. Others swore it had Indian blood. In a way, the storytellers at Kathakar were identifying themselves with a tradtion that began thousands of years ago, even before the discovery of writing.The earliest source of The Arabian Nights that survives is a small fragment from the ninth century CE. The sultan grants Dinarzade’s entreating request to hear of one more of the pleasant stories she had read, for the last time. The sultan was so enamoured that he married her and made her is queen while her sister Dinarzade married his brother Schahzenan. | SRIDHAR BALAN
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