What if a fortune teller’s prophecy turned out to be an epic? That is the idea at the heart of ‘Kurathi Ramayanam’, an old folk song Kerala has almost forgotten in which a Kurathi reads the palms of Dasharatha’s queens and, in doing so, tells the entire Ramayana.

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This Kerala Piravi, it returns as ‘Oru Kathayundu: Kurathi Ramayanam’, a music video produced jointly by Mathrubhumi dotcom and Mathrubhumi Books.

A story told as a prophecy

Kurathi Ramayanam is a traditional folk art form that, according to Priyaraj Govindaraj, Social Media Creative Head at Mathrubhumi was very popular around the 1920s. He has directed the video.

“Over the years, the song gradually faded from everyone’s memory. Its lyrics are a mix of Tamil and Malayalam, as the Kurathi community traces its roots to Pandya Nadu in Tamil Nadu. Kakkayar is one of their lineages,” said Priyaraj.

Foretelling the future was their hereditary profession, and Priyaraj sees a real gift in it. "In that sense, I would say they are the best storytellers," he says.

In those days, people believed Kurathis could predict future. Whenever one appeared, villagers gathered around, offered them gifts and asked to have their palms read.

The song rests on a lovely idea. A Kuravan and Kurathi arrive in Ayodhya, and Dasharatha's three wives, Kausalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra, hurry to her with open hands. They want to know whether they will be blessed with sons. The Kurathi studies their palms and begins to speak.

What she describes as their future is the Ramayana itself.

"In the future tense, she tells them the entire story of the Ramayana," says Priyaraj. One of the best-known lines tells the queens that the three mothers will have four sons between them, and that the eldest will be named Rama.

How a novel led to a lost song

The video began with a small character in a novel. While working on a programme based on this story, Priyaraj read ‘Ashu’ by VM Devadas. The protagonist's grandmother in the book is a Kurathi. Whenever trouble visits the house, she lights a lamp on the verandah and sings the same lines again and again, until she swoons and falls.

“I found those lines very interesting and realised that they had a connection to the Ramayana,” he recalls. When he enquired about this, the answer surprised him.

"There was once a song called Kurathi Ramayanam, but over the years, it gradually faded away and was forgotten.”

That discovery became a script, and the script became this video.

Starting from Shurpanakha

The film does not retell the whole epic. Its lines begin with the entry of Shurpanakha, because that is where the war of the Ramayana begins. From there, it turns to what war leaves behind: violence against women, the exploitation of nature, and cruelty towards birds and animals.

The video also gives the old form a modern turn, following a woman as she moves through her memories. Its message is simple: All of this is wrong, and one day nature will strike back.

Four characters carry the story, along with the Kurathi herself: Shurpanakha, Maricha, Jatayu and Sita.

"All of them are wounded human beings, and we highlight their pain through the emotions in this video," says Priyaraj.

Each one stands for something larger. Shurpanakha speaks for women who suffer violence. "We say 'no' to violence and sexual violence against women by depicting the plight of Shurpanakha," he says.

The film also insists that war must end and children must be protected, because the trauma it leaves on them is unbearable and cannot be repaired.

Maricha stands for the forest, tribal culture and its customs. This is their space, the film says, and they must be allowed to live freely. It is also a plea against mob violence, so that there is never another Madhu, the victim of a mob lynching.

Jatayu carries the cost of human greed. When Ravana clips his wings, the film shows how cruelly people treat birds, animals and nature, and how far they push into their world.

Sita sits inside an enclosed circle, a kalam. It is a quiet portrayal of the trauma women experience everywhere, often pushed to the margins and confined by society.

The team and the launch

Priyaraj, who is Social Media Creative Head at Mathrubhumi, also appears in a lead role, alongside Mathrubhumi Club FM RJ Vijitha Vijayakumar. Amrutha Shankar, Sandra, VS Sharath, Shishira Vijayan and Rajan Manjummal complete the cast.

The music is composed by Jayadas Gopal, who also lends his voice to the song alongside Dr Binitha Ranjith. Arun Sivan handled the cinematography and Joel Kavi the editing. Laiju Sreevalsan was the art director, and Sreejith choreographed the video.

Popular Malayalam singers Jyotsna, Sayanora, Nithya Mammen, Stephen Devassy, Harishankar and Naresh Iyer launched the video together. Anish Varghese, Head of Marketing, Indian Operations, Joy Alukkas Group, was also at the event.

Worth listening to

Folk songs live only as long as someone sings them. Kurathi Ramayanam very nearly slipped away, kept alive in a few lines sung by a grandmother in a novel. This video gives it a second life, and puts an old question to a new audience: what are we doing to one another, and to the world around us?