Paheli.....a beautiful Indian folktale

Paheli reminds me the Malayalam film ‘Njan Gandharvan’ by the late Malayalam director Padmarajan. Both these films derived their themes from local folklore. Stories of Yakshi and Gandharvan were indispensable part of my childhood days. Kottarathil Shankunni’s classic Ithihyamala introduced me to the world of spirits, ghosts and exorcism. Like any other child I stood in awe of these extraordinary world of celestial beings and great magical powers. Their adventures fascinated me. The stories told by my mother of her real-life encounter with the ‘other world’ filled me with fear and excitement.More than fear these Indian spirits invoked in me a curiosity about them. I found them more or like human beings. For Indian mind nothing exists as an ‘absolute good’ or ‘absolute evil’. Good and evil are relative terms. Therefore Indian gods and ghosts have human like qualities. They think like any other human being. They also have limitations and their worlds have their own rules. I learned that even Indra, lord of the heaven, is not above these rules. Indra is a position with a fixed term (like President of a country). Once the term is completed the current ruler steps down and another eligible one takes the position as Indra. As in Paheli, in the Malayalam film

 



a celestial being falls in love with a mortal. The film depicted the predicament of the celestial being who was torn between the love for it’s beloved and the rules bound by the other world. For a while Paheli took me back to my childhood fantasies.