Folktales of a Forgotten Folk

A string of forty tales, Folktales of a Forgotten Folk offers a glimpse of the creative world of the Kamars alias Paharia, a tribe living in a quiet backwater of Odisha. Demographically victimized and economically marginalized, they have preferred a life of wild seclusion in forgotten cozy hills where, besides eking out a meagre existence on bamboo craft, they also churn out rich corpus of orature. The entire day they chisel bamboo into exquisite art, and when evening settles down they sit around a burning hearth to listen to tales woven out of eerie jungle night and sylvan mountain valley. The tales reflect the collective creative engagement, not idiosyncrasy of an individual raconteur, and epitomise a candid tour de force . This collection is a treasure-trove of stories, sometimes heart-wrenching and sometimes peppered with irony and ribald humour.