'Gulgulewali Katha' or 'A Story About Gulgulas'
A 'sweet' tale translated from Awadhi
Awadhi is the main Eastern Hindi dialect spoken in northern India. Its name derives from Awadh, the region where it is primarily, though not exclusively, spoken. It is also sometimes called Purbi (which means ‘eastern’); Kosali (after the legendary kingdom of Kosala), or Baiswari (after the district of Baiswara where a version of it is spoken).
Awadhi is written in the Devanagari script; it used to be written in the Kaithi script as well.
According to the 2011 Census of India, Awadhi is spoken by almost 4 million people in India as their mother tongue.
Till as recently as the 18th century, Awadhi was one of the two main literary dialects of Hindi (the other was Braj Bhasha). It ‘stands immortalised’ in the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas (Saxena, 1971, p.9). Tulsidas, amongst the most important of the saint-poets of the medieval Bhakti movement in northern India, is also Hindi’s most renowned poet. In 1574, he commenced the composition of his Ramcharitmanas, in which he tells the story of Ram, the legendary prince of Awadh. Tulsi’s epic poem is unanimously regarded as the greatest achievement of Hindi literature. Composed in the vernacular Awadhi rather than the scholarly Sanskrit, it became accessible to everyone without the need for learned intervention by the brahmin. Today, known to its audience as Tulsi’s Ramayan, or simply the Manas, Tulsi’s great poem is read, sung, recited, and retold in almost every Hindu household in northern India as the accepted and dominant version of the story of Ram. It is also the basis of the Ram Lila — a tradition believed to have been started in Banaras almost 500 years ago by Tulsidas himself and still enthusiastically observed.
Awadhi is also the language of Padmavat, the great epic romance composed by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540. The Sufi romances, Madhumalati, written by Manjhan in 1545, and Mirigavati, written by Qutban in 1503, are other important works in Awadhi.
Spoken Awadhi is now gradually being replaced by Khari Boli, modern Hindi, and has declined in importance as a literary language. The dialects spoken in eastern India today can be grouped into eastern, central, and western Awadhi.
Awadhi is also spoken in parts of Nepal. Indian indentured labour in the 19th and early 20th centuries carried Awadhi to places as far away as Fiji, the Caribbean islands, and South Africa. Versions of the language, influenced by local languages and other dialects of Hindi, are still spoken by a significant minority in these regions.
For those interested in a linguistics or scholarly perspective on Awadhi, I strongly recommend Dr. Baburam Saxena’s wonderful Evolution of Awadhi, first published in 1937. A second edition was brought out by Motilal Banarsidas in 1971.
It was while leafing through Dr. Saxena’s book that I found the quirky, delightful ‘Gulgulewali Katha’ I have translated here. The original tale is in Lakhimpuri Awadhi (one of the western Awadhi dialects) as in given in the Appendices to the work under ‘Modern Awadhi Texts’ (Saxena, 1971, pp. 430-437). Dr Saksena writes that this was one of two ‘specimens’ (of modern Lakhimpuri) given to him by his mother in 1923, and which he first published in his monogram on Lakhimpuri in 1921 (Saxena, 1971, p. 429). As far as I have been able to ascertain, this original Awadhi text is in the public domain.
The tale is also accompanied by Dr. Saksena’s English translation. However, the translation I give here is purely mine (as are any and all mistakes it may contain!).
GULGULEWALI KATHA or A STORY ABOUT GULGULAS
Translated from Awadhi by Rohini Chowdhury
There once lived a king with his mother and his wife. Every day, the mother used to prepare fifty-six different kinds of food, which she would eat and give her son to eat. For her daughter-in-law she would make a single roti of bajra and give her half of it with salt in the morning and half in the evening. The daughter-in-law, in anger, would throw the roti into a large earthen pot and the salt into a jar. In this way, twelve years went by.
Then one day, the old woman made some gulgulas. She covered the gulgulas and went out to answer the call of nature. As she left, she said to her daughter-in-law, “Keep an eye on these.”
The daughter-in-law, before the old woman came back, took out three gulgulas. She did not eat them, but hid them away.
The old woman returned, and after rinsing her mouth and washing her hands and feet, she went to take a look at the wooden bowl in which she had put the gulgulas. She said, “Daughter-in-law, are you the one who has taken the gugulas from this?”
The daughter-in-law replied, “No, mother, I have not taken them. Who knows, maybe the cat has taken them? She is like that.”
The cat then said, “You wait, you miserable woman! See if I don’t destroy you completely — I am no cat if I don’t! You are the one who took them and accuse me of stealing!”
When it was evening, the queen spread her cot and lighted a diya, an earthenware lamp. When she realised that the king would be late returning from the court, she said to herself, “I might as well sleep for a while.” And she went to sleep.
But the cat — what did she do? She stole somebody’s turban and put it on the queen’s bed. She took somebody’s sword and laid it there. She also carried off somebody’s shoes and hid them under the queen’s bed. Putting all these things there, the cat went away.
When the king returned from the court, he saw the shoes, the sword, and the turban, and came to the conclusion that some man had visited the queen. He pulled out his sword to kill her, when the diya spoke up. “King, understand the truth before you kill her,” said the diya. The king raised his sword three times to kill her and all three times the diya spoke out, stopping him. Then the king put down his sword, picked up the lota and went away to the privy. While he was away, the queen woke up and put out the diya.
Now, there was a well in front of the door of the diya’s house; the king was rinsing his mouth there.
When the diya reached home, his mother said, “Son, you are very late today. I have been sitting here, waiting for you, with the food all ready.”
The diya replied, “Mother, do not ask! The queen is in great trouble.”
The king stood stock still, listening.
The diya’s mother asked, “Why, son, what happened?”
The diya related all that had happened. The king heard everything. He returned home, and lying down, pulled the covers over his head.
When it was morning, the king’s mother again made fifty-six types of food and said, “Son, come and eat.”
The king said, “Mother, serve the food.”
She served the food on to a plate.
The king said, “Serve a second plate of food.”
She served the food on to a second plate.
The king said, “Serve a third plate.”
But the old woman said, “Come, let us eat, you and me. Your wife can eat later.”
Then the king said, “No, serve a third plate.”
When the food had been served on to a third plate, the king said, “O queen, come and eat.”
The queen replied, “Listen, O king. Twelve years have gone by and in all those years you did not ask me to eat. What is different today?” And she placed the rotis from the earthen pot before him and poured the salt from the jar onto the courtyard floor.
The old woman was mortified and died right there, right then. All her scheming had come to nothing. But the king and the queen reigned for a long time.
May everybody’s good days return as theirs did.
bajra: a kind of millet, considered an inferior grain
diya: an earthenware lamp
lota: a small, round metal pot, usually made of brass or copper, used for holding water
gulgula (plural gulgule): a traditional Indian deep-fried sweet, made with flour and sugar, also called ‘pua’ in some places.
Translation copyright © Rohini Chowdhury 2021
I hope you enjoyed reading this tale as much as I enjoyed translating it! What kinds of works would you like to read here in translation? Do write in and let me know!
My translation of Gulgulewali Katha was first published in September 2021, in The Story Birds. It was accompanied by this delightful illustration of the vengeful cat by writer and illustrator Shaiontoni Bose.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Saksena, Baburam. Evolution of Awadhi (A Branch of Hindi). 2nd edn. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971.
Tulsidas. Ramcharitmanas. Trans. Rohini Chowdhury. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India, 2019. Thanks for reading Eaten by a Fish! Subscribe to receive new posts and support my work.
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