“Sweet and Salty” by Sandhya Rao and illustrated by Srividya Natarajan. Published by Tulika. A humorous folk tale from Andhra Pradesh and part of the under the banyan series from Tulika. This series is a collection of folk stories from different parts of India. We have read six books from this series and loved them all.
Coming back to this particular story from Andhra. Gorannagaru is a famous storyteller who is visiting the village of Narasannapeta. Bangaramma who lives in this village is very excited about his arrival. She has heard him tell stories often when she was a little girl. Now she wants her husband Penchilayya to attend Gorannagaru’s harikatha every night. And Penchilayya is least interested in listening to stories. He just wants to sleep in the night after a hard day’s work. What is he to do now!
Well he has no choice and ends up going every night. Gorannagaru was narrating the Ramayana. Penchilayya ended up sleeping every night. When he returned home, he would tell Bangaramma that the story was sweet or heavy or salty based on what he experienced. These experiences however have a very funny side to them :) And eventually lead to his wife figuring out that he hasn’t been listening to the story at all :p
What are these funny incidents? Why did Penchilayya remember the stories as sweet, heavy, salty? What happened next? My seven year old couldn’t stop laughing when we read this last year. Saw an amazing storytelling performance by Shyam as part of one of funky rainbow’s buzzaars. This is one of those MUST READ books in the humour genre. Apt for 5+ year olds. The illustrations are adapted from the style used in the making of the traditional Kondapalli toys in Andhra Pradesh.