Telling Stories.

STORY TELLING AND THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION.

During my time in Ranchi I discussed the way that stories could be retold in the context of present-day concerns. Such a process would in fact entail the re-interpretation of a traditional story. I began by outlining some story types. I was told that some people in chotanagpur when asked about stories, asked: What kind of story ? A distinction was drawn between stories told for fun, and “real stories”. The fun stories tended to be part of a continuing oral tradition that are in everyday use, and are often ways of teaching or putting over an idea, rather like a proverb. They could also be just entertaining. But “Real stories” seem to carry a greater weight, and are told only on special occasions, perhaps linked to festivals, or to rituals that are performed for specific reasons. The two stories that I have been working with over a number of years, which are called the “Karam Kahani” and the “Lohar Kahani” would be thought of as “real stories” in that sense. They are stories which are not to be taken lightly, and which carry hidden, deeper meanings. They are not “real” in the sense that they are about historical facts. The concept of telling a story about something which has actually happened does not seem to be an important concern. That is to say, the stories are not “historical” in the sense that we understand this term in a modern, objective sense. The “real story” helps in revealing a reality. It is not thought of as just about what really happened.
The term “Kahani” is itself interesting. It implies something that is told. But there may be older, and more mysterious origins to the notion of “Kahani”. The question “Ka ?” implies “What ?” There is a famous hymn in the Vedas which explores this question. The gods have gathered, and are mystified about something that is emerging from the primal waters. It is the golden egg—hiranya garbha. The hymn repeatedly asks “What is it ?” This notion of mystery implied by “Ka?” also comes to mean the primal emptiness, or zero, from which everything emerges. In the great “sanskritic” tradition we hear about the Katha. There is a veritable ocean of stories, which are sometimes called “purana”, meaning stories from the beginning, old stories. The traditional art of narrating is Kathak, and this included dance drama. The story is recited, but the recitative element is accompanied by certain movements, together with music. The “kahani” seems to belong more to the folk tradition, and is an oral tradition that does not have quite the formalistic structure which is associated with the katha. That, anyway, is how I feel there is a difference between katha and kahani.
Just now there is an interest in a “narrative theology”. This kind of theology may focus more on a process, rather than on a fixed text. The Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan has written a short book entitled “Finding is the First Act.” He has taken this title from a poem by Emily Dickinson:
Finding is the first Act
The second loss.
Third, Expedition for
The “Golden Fleece.”
Crossan begins his analysis of folk tale motifs related to what he calls “World Treasure Tales”. He goes on to look at the Jewish Treasure Tradition, and in that context the Treasure parables of Jesus. This could also include the idea of what is lost, and then found. In another work he talks about the theology of story. Recently the theme of “Telling the Story of Jesus in Asia” has been taken up by the Asian theologians. In a kind of position paper exploring this theme Fr. Julian Saldanha has shown how the telling of the story is part of doing theology in the Asian context. He asks how the telling affects the way that people live their Faith. In this context see the Document: “Telling the Story of Jesus in Asia. The Message of the First Asian Mission Congress, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, October 18-22, 2006”. (Published in Vidya Jyoti, Volume 71, Jan. 2007) Here we read: “The pastoral-catechetical congress explored a unique methodology of evangelising: story-telling or faith-sharing”
In Ranchi I began my presentation on how I have been looking at stories, by showing the series of pictures which I did for the Holy Cross students home near Udipi, Mangalore, in 1983. I had called this series (in the form of a kind of frieze, almost 70 ft long) a “Kristha Katha”. This was inspired by the “Krishna Katha” visual representations which I saw in the Udipi Maths or Monasteries near by. In fact at that time I was just in the process of starting an “Art Ashram”, and I felt that such an ashram would be very much concerned with story telling, and narrative structures. It was leading on from this work that I began thinking about other forms of story telling in the Indian context, and especially the tribal and folk traditions of narrative, as we find in the Kahanis like the Karam Kahani and the Lohar Kahani. Can such Kahanis help us to think of ways in which the narrative traditions of the Gospel, which are built around the powerful stories that Jesus himself used to describe what he understood to be the “Kingdom of God”, can be re-told in the Asian context?
Such ideas seemed to be quite novel to the theological students whom I was talking to in Ranchi. One problem seemed to be that they were unfamiliar with the idea of a kind of structural analysis of stories. The concept that a story is built around a framework, or scaffolding, seemed a strange way of looking at a story. I had myself gained a number of ideas from a book that I have been reading, called “The Hidden Order of Art” by Anton Ehrenzweig. The author who was born in Austria in 1908, settled in England in 1938, where he was a lecturer in Art Education at Goldsmith’s College until his death in 1966. I have found some his ideas on art education and the link between art and psychology very interesting, as this is a field that I am particularly interested in myself.
I have however found that my approach to a narrative art, and the re-interpretation of traditional stories, has aroused many doubts especially in Christian theological circles. Can one see a common thread linking the stories that Jesus told, with folk stories in general, and the Indian Ocean of story telling ? There have been those who have argued that Jesus was an oriental Guru, precisely because he taught like so many in the Indian spiritual tradition, through stories, and the link between stories and his own life, and the life of those around him. Indian Gurus, like for example Ramakrishna Paramahamsa have used stories to bring to consciousness deep spiritual insights. We find this tradition going back to the Upanishads. Do Tribal stories have hidden in them the treasure which we call a primal spirituality, which has the power to transform the way in which we look at the world of today ? This was a direction in which I would very much like to do more reflection in the future.

Ranchi visit Feb 9 to 21

I have just returned from Ranchi. The two weeks that I spent there brought me back to fundamental questions that have concerned me over the last twenty years. I first went to Ranchi area in 1987, on the invitation of the Rev. Dr. Willibald Jacob, who was at that time stationed in Govindpura. His interest in tribal cultures in the context of wider social issues facing primal communities in the Jharkhand area, led to my work on a series of paintings on the “Lohar Kahani”, or story of the Iron Smelters, which probably dates back to the beginning of the iron age. These paintings were later shown in different places in Switzerland, culminating in the WCC meeting at Basle where the theme of Justice, Peace and the integrity of creation was discussed.
Later, I was involved in the designing and decorating of the Regional seminary of Orissa, situated outside Sambalpur. In fact the train going to Ranchi from Bangalore, called the “Tata express” passes through Sambalpur. There also I was very much concerned with the rich heritage of tribal cultures which contributed so much to the regional culture of Orissa, and the flowering of a temple art and dance which we can see in the fertile coastal area of Konarak, Bhavaneshwar and Puri.
After working on the “Lohar Kahani”, I became particularly interested in another tribal myth called the “Karam Kahani” which is linked to a festival celebrating the fertility of the land, called “Karam”. There is a tree to be found in the forests of Jharkhand which is called the Karam Tree, and three branches of this tree are carried to the central place of the tribal settlement known as the “Akhra”. There the branches are welcomed as representing the Karam Raja, and they are put at the centre of various fruits of the field, and the young women and men of the community dance around the symbol of life.
In Ranchi this time I was asked to give a series of talks about the work which I have done relating tribal spirituality to the Gospel. In 1994 I gave the Alexander Duff lectures, where I linked the tribal Faith systems that we can find in India to the Celtic spirituality of Europe which draws inspiration from symbols and poetic, narrative traditions from pre Christian times.
I was taken to Hazaribagh, where there is a struggle going on to try and preserve something of the ancient culture which reaches back to Buddha, and beyond to neolythic times some 30-40000 years ago. I stayed at the Sanskriti centre founded by Bulu Imam, where he and his family are engaged in a kind of cultural activism. In a recent issue of “Outlook” (Feb 12, 2007) K.N. Memani comments: “As an Indian, I feel proud about the Tata-Corus deal. In fact, the entire country is proud because it heralds the making of India Inc. as a major global player. It’s not only the fulfilment of a dream for the Tatas, but for the country too.” And yet it is the Tata Steel company, along with other global industrial interests which is destroying the whole environment of the Damodar valley, and other parts of Jharkhand, where rich deposits of minerals and coal, together even with Uranium, are now being exploited, at the cost of indigenous peoples and their culture. There were harrowing scenes of villages in which the environment is being destroyed, people displaced, and the poor struggling to scratch, quite literally a poor living from disused mines, where coal deposits are gleaned by local tribals and loaded on shaky cycles which they push sometimes for 40 to 50 km across hilly tracks, in order to get a small pittance from selling the coal which they are technically accused of “stealing” from the open mines, which have destroyed their ancient agrarian economy. These little hoards of coal, taken from abandoned mines where the big industrial players have abandoned their operations, because it is no longer profitable, are burnt in the little tribal hamlets, so as to get “coke” for household use. The acrid smoke from these fires fill the air, bringing chest problems to the young and old alike. I myself could feel the fumes affecting my breathing, as we drove through these otherwise picturesque settlements.
I was asked if I could be involved with a programme to give new life to tribal art forms. I was happy to meet people like Dr. Ram Dayal Munda who I had met twenty years ago when he was still the Vice Chancellor of Ranchi university. Another old acquaintance, Meghnath, who invited me to his project “Akhra” where he showed me some of the videos which he has been making to make people more aware of the problems which tribal people are facing in Jharkhand. One of his video productions discusses “Development from the barrel of a gun”.
This visit to Jharkhand besides renewing a number of old links with this part of the country, rich in so many ways, but also suffering because of its resources which are being exploited, brought home to me that perhaps it is in this direction that I should increasingly invest my own art work. Dr. Willibald Jacob, whom I met briefly again in Ranchi, handed over to me an invitation from the director of a cultural centre at Chorin, not far from Berlin, inviting me to have an exhibition there in an ancient Cistercian monastic site, in the coming year. This project I felt could once again focus a concern which I began with when I first visited Ranchi in 1987, that looks at the need for an eco-sensitive theology and spirituality in the context of our modern world.

Jyoti Sahi's Art Ashram: a new blog

This is the first posting of Silvepura.blogspot.com, the new blogger of Jyoti Sahi's Art Ashram in Silvepura, a cosy countrystyle village in the north of Bangalore. This is just a try out, made by Karel and Paule Steenbrink on 8 February 2007