The centenary year celebration of
renowned Rajasthani writer and Padma Shri awardee Vijaydan Detha (1926-2013) is
an opportunity to revisit his work that has travelled far beyond the landscape
in which it was born. Detha, also known as Bijji, painstakingly explored,
collected and revived the folk tales and oral traditions deeply rooted in the
soil of Rajasthan. Through translations, his stories reached readers across
India and the world, while theatre practitioners, filmmakers and Dastangoi
performers found in them rich material for reinterpretation and contemporary
expression.
The list of artists drawn to
Detha’s work is remarkable. Habib Tanvir and Shyam Benegal adapted Charandas
Chor, Mani Kaul and Amol Palekar brought Duvidha to the screen, Prakash Jha adapted
Parineeti, Pushpendra Singh made Lajwanti, and Mahmood Farooqui adapted
Chouboli for Dastangoi, among many others.
What is it about Detha’s folk
tales that continues to connect them with everyone, from young artists to urban
audiences? I have had an answer recently in Pune, during a performance of
Detha’s well-known story Dohri Zindagi.
Told in Marwari and Hindi, Dohri
Zindagi revolves around two miserly and greedy merchants who arrange the
marriage of their unborn children while they are still in the womb. Both
households are blessed with daughters but one of the merchants decides to raise
his daughter as a boy. Driven by the lure of dowry, the two are eventually
married off. The truth about this same-sex marriage is revealed on their
wedding night. Gradually, however, love begins to blossom between the two
women. Rejected and despised by society, they create new identities for
themselves – Beejan and Teejan.
Directed by Gurleen Judge and
Neha Singh, the play moves beyond a story of greed and avarice to confront
questions of same-sex relationships in a feudal society and the duplicity of
modern social structures. The story feels strikingly contemporary because its
emotional core remains immediately recognisable. Some members of the Pune
audience appeared uncomfortable with a few of the play’s “bold” scenes on
stage. That discomfort, however, was precisely what the directors intended to
provoke.
Detha was born on September 1,
1926, in Borunda, near Jodhpur, into a family associated with the bardic
tradition of Rajasthan. His monumental 14-volume Baatan Ri Phulwari (Garden of
Tales) brought together a vast collection of Rajasthani folk tales and has
subsequently been translated into Hindi and other languages, earning wide
appreciation.
Yet Detha’s importance lies not
merely in preserving folklore. His stories repeatedly transform folk narratives
into sites of questioning and resistance. Whether in Duvidha, Lajwanti or Dohri
Zindagi, women find themselves trapped within patriarchal structures while
experiencing an intense yearning for love, dignity and freedom. In Detha’s
stories, a ghost can be a lover, a companion or an ally. A ghost appears in
both Duvidha and Dohri Zindagi, blurring the boundaries between the real and
the imagined.
Duvidha, in particular, can be
read as a feminist tale about agency, desire and the limited choices available
to women within patriarchal society beautifully depicted on screen by Mani
Kaul. Through its unique non-linear narrative style, the film treads between
the real and the imaginary.
Detha’s folk imagination createsspaces in which women can challenge identities imposed upon them even if those challenges come at a considerable cost.
A few years ago, when I asked
filmmaker Pushpendra Singh about adapting Detha’s stories, he spoke about the
fundamental challenge facing any artist working with folklore:
“As an artiste, you constantly
grapple with how to translate a [folk] tale or adapt a literary piece. As a
storyteller, you also want your stories to look contemporary. Old feudalism has
given way to something new, not so widely seen in today’s Rajasthan.”
This perhaps explains the
enduring appeal of Detha. His stories are rooted in the geography of Rajasthan
and its cultural memory, yet they are not confined by them. The folk element in
Detha’s writing comes through its language, idiom, humour and dialogue. But
beneath the texture of folklore lies a persistent engagement with power,
desire, social hierarchy and freedom.
When Detha wrote Dohri Zindagi
around four decades ago, there was little open discussion in Indian society
about same-sex relationships. When the story is adapted for the stage today,
contemporary voices and concerns inevitably become part of it. It is therefore
hardly surprising that the performers in Dohri Zindagi also felt free to
comment on contemporary Indian politics.
Along with his close friend and
noted folklorist and musicologist Komal Kothari, Detha founded the Rupayan
Sansthan, an institution devoted to documenting and promoting the folklore,
art, music and cultural traditions of Rajasthan. Detha’s birth centenary is an
opportunity to ask why folk narratives continue to matter in a rapidly changing
world. His stories remind us that folklore is not a frozen tradition. It is
capable of questioning power.
As performed during Mahindra
Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) last year in Delhi, the award-winning play
Swang: Jas Ki Tas (in Bundelkhandi dialect), which is based on his story Thakur
Ka Roothana, uses elements of the traditional folk performance style of Swang
to expose the contemporary social and political disorder around us.
Detha’s stories continue to find
new readers, filmmakers, theatre practitioners and audiences. They speak in the
language of folklore, but they ask questions about contemporary realities which
confront us.
(The Wire)
