Storytelling Wk. 2: Tale From the Riverside

Source: Wikipedia

"Dad, I don't think there's another river quite like the Ganges," said the boy, as he was gently nestled into his bed. "But why must the Ganges flow so much and so violently?"

His father softly responded, "The Ganges has its own story that explains its mysterious ways. Our family name, Samprashana, means 'friends of wings' and this is because our ancestors were close companions to the river cranes on the Ganges. It is said that a crane would land on the window sill each morning and greet our ancestors, exchanging a story for a small token of nourishment." The father dimmed the lights in the room and continued, 'Be still, my son, for here is one of the many stories our ancestors have passed down to us."

While the crane was not there to see it from the beginning, he was a very close friend to the mother of the Earth. Because the crane was clever and observant, Mother trusted him with keeping tabs on the living creatures of the valley and their needs. It was mostly a menial quest. Sometimes he would report about a quarrel between mongooses, or he would tell the mother of an intense battle between two great hawks. Eventually a whole new creature appeared in the valley. This beast made the land work for him. It called itself man.

Men were intelligent, emotional, violent, and amazing, the crane thought. Unfortunately, this ability led them to even threaten some of the gods. Men could move quickly on the backs of other animals, and were often haughty enough to challenge the gods to races. One day, a man started a race against one of the gods, and while the god was very powerful, he had not practiced enough riding the horse. The man could make the quickest of turns, highest of jumps, and stop without hurting his horse. This man made the god utterly furious. The god then hid the man's horse in the sunless underworld.

The man could no longer race the gods and thus felt powerless. He made it his lifelong quest to find his racehorse, but after millions of excavations it seemed he would be forever the simple human that he was. At the ancient age of five thousand he finally discovered the horse in the light-less world and he died there of happiness. The god was pleased that his challenger had been defeated, and he began to boast to all of the other men in the world.

The crane could tell that the men were unhappy with how their brother was treated and led to die. They began to rebel against the earth, putting their waste and trash directly into the earth. The crane pleaded to Mother, "We must ease their sorrow or else your beauty will be ruined!" Mother, stricken with grief, cried down from the high heavens and washed the valley and the sunless place with her tears. Her sadness was so terrible that the entire valley began to flood away. The crane knew what he had to do. He dove straight down with the strongest of strikes. The sheer force of his dive made folds in the land that rose up and made what today is the Himalayas. Mother's flood was thus corralled by the mighty mountains, and the river began to look much like it does today.

He had managed to nourish the people's shores, wash away the remains of the man and his horse, and also serve his divine purpose.

"Good night, my little crane," whispered the father as the light washed away.

Sarus Crane - Wikipedia

Author's note:

The story I tried to re-tell was the Ganges Story from the Ramayana (Narayan, R. K. (1972) The Ramayana.). 

In the original story, Sakara is a fortunate ruler who has planned out a great horse sacrifice. This sacrifice involves the passing of a decorated horse through each area of a country, and this passage is a declaration of the ruler's power. Any opposition to the horse is an act of war. This is where Indra comes in, or the man in my story. Indra goes on to hide the horse behind a meditating saint. Sakara's sons are assigned to dig until they find Sakara's horse. They finally discover Indra's hiding place and the saint is wrongly accused of stealing the horse. This saint is then tortured. This leads to Bhagiratha, similar to the crane in the story, agreeing with Shiva to help avoid the full wrath of Ganga descending upon the earth. The tortured saint thus receives salvation, and the valley is not wiped out by the powerful Ganga.

I tried to refrain from using many of the names in the story because I think the story should appeal on a general level, like a fable. I also changed the horse sacrifice in the Ganges story to a race, mainly because I think a boy would find a race with gods to be very exciting. The crane also took some of the roles that multiple characters did in the story because I wanted him to be the most heroic crane a boy could imagine.