Persephone Issue No.22
PERSEPHONE
We grew up on fairytales. Told in soft voices before bedtime, with happy endings tied up neatly in gold. Castles, kisses, curses undone. Good and evil clearly marked. Love is always triumphant.
But the stories didn’t start that way. Before they were polished and sweetened for little ears, they were darker, stranger, more human. There was fear, longing, power, sacrifice. Girls who didn’t get saved. Monsters that looked a lot like men. Witches who weren’t wicked—just misunderstood.
This month, we trace our way back to those stories. The ones that came before the gloss. Because fairytales were never just about magic. In these tales, we find not just escape—but understanding. Here’s to the stories that shaped us. And to find new meaning in the ones we thought we already knew.
—Warmly,
Poulomi
Dearest gentle readers,
Stories and tales connect us like no other. The passing down of morals and values through storytelling has been an important aspect of our culture. Fairy tales, in particular, hold a mirror to our collective psyche—revealing fears, hopes, and dreams through allegory.
When translated into art, these tales gain new dimensions, speaking across generations and geographies. Artists reinterpret them not only to preserve tradition but also to question and reshape it. In this issue of “Persephone”, we rediscover timeless truths and confront contemporary realities—making fairy tales not relics of the past, but living, evolving expressions of human experience.
—Hemleena
METAPHOR AND METAMORPHOSIS
The world of fairy tales, myths, folklore etc. continues to fascinate and excite us with an unparalleled sense, no matter how grown up we become. The warmth we once felt listening to bedtime stories about the magical entities has never entirely faded away. For me, it’s the only way that connects one to the old charm of nostalgia, the only feeling The most significant impact of fairy tales in my childhood was that of Lakshminath Bezbaruah’s 1911 “Burhi Aair Xadhu”(loosely translated as “Grandmother's tales”). Almost all of my imaginary friends were inspired by these stories and they’ve contributed a lot to how I perceive society.
No wonder a huge corpus of literature has been dedicated to the analysis of fairy tales and the moral lessons they deliver on virtues and vices. Even though Christina Bacchilega remarked, “Fairy tales are based on the willful suspension of our disbelief”, referring to Coleridge’s famous statement, both authors and readers time and again pose serious questions about the inextricably intertwined dimensions of the reality and the magical, leading to the restructuring of the genre.
My article attempts to problematise the conventional perception of the role of animals and plants in fairy tales, by conducting a study of the Assamese tales “Tejimola” and “The Kite’s daughter” from “Burhi Aair Xadhu.” Laurie Shannon described the concept of totemism, the ancient hunter-gatherers’ sense of unity with nature, as “Ecosystemic” in fairy tales. Analyzing animals in William Shakespeare’s plays, she writes, “early modern humanity is relatively ecosystemic: it always has animality and divinity and plants and elements in or with it.” For me, Assamese stories depict animals and plants as characters who make choices and initiate actions, instead of just fulfilling “human” roles.
“Tejimola” is perhaps the most tragic and retold tale of Bezbaruah's collection. When Tejimola’s stepmother, insecure about her position in the household, torments her in the absence of her father, brutally pounds her to death and buries her, it's the natural forms that initiate the process of divine justice. “The Kite's Daughter” tells the story of a girl abandoned by her parents, rescued and raised by a kite. Later the girl, married off to a merchant is saved from multiple dangers by her mother kite.
The kite, vaguely reminding me of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book”, notices an infant being drifted away in a river, saves and brings her to her nest and the girl grows up to be a beautiful woman. It's to be noted that while Mowgli has a name, nowhere in the story, the girl's name has been mentioned. Even when she's married off to a rich merchant, she's addressed only as the Kite's daughter. The entrusting of motherly duties to a kite shows the close kinship humans and mother nature share. The humans are shown as the passive subjects on the receiving end of the kite's actions. When the co-wives of the innocent girl torture her, it's the Kite who magically appears to her rescue. The daughter barely speaks anything except to call her kite mother, she repeats the same spell taught by her.
Tejimola reincarnates as a bottle-gourd plant from the piece of earth where she's buried. The stepmother destroys it once she hears the plant singing the story of Tejimola. From the remnants of the gourd, she re-emerges to life as a citrus tree and when the tree too is thrown away in the river, she metamorphoses as a lotus. On his return journey, Tejimola's father hears the lotus, startled, recognises her name and asks the flower to transform into a bird if it's really his daughter. He then brings the bird back home and exposes the stepmother. In the end, justice is delivered and Tejimola transforms back into her human form.
Since Tejimola metamorphoses across different life forms, it's impossible to put her as a protagonist within the category of “human.” She has a dispersed personhood. Her incarnations signify the fact that life is all the same for all living beings, shattering the aspects of corporeality. Donna Haraway terms this as “relationality” and in her biological works, proposes that we need to view the world as sympoietic “which is the recognition that no species can act or thrive in the world alone.”
According to Plumwood, Tejimola returning to her human form doesn't diminish the scope of reading her multiple deaths and living as an “ecological animist conception of afterlife which is a positive ecological presence in the life of other species, not an end of a story but a continuation. In one’s death they may lose an organisational form but they get incorporated in the lives of other beings.”
GRIMM REALITIES
Once upon a time, fairy tales weren’t sugar-dusted bedtime stories with glittering gowns and spontaneous animal choreography. Nope. They were more like cautionary tales wrapped in tragedy, violence, and the occasional demonic bargain—stories you wouldn’t exactly want to fall asleep to unless your dreams were into trauma-core. Before Disney waved its wand and gave us saccharine endings, these tales were used to explain the inexplicable, to warn, to scare, and sometimes—let’s be real—to entertain with a good ol' dose of chaos.
Let’s start with the curious case of Rumpelstiltskin. You know, the weird little dude with a name that sounds like someone sneezed while naming him. In the tale we grew up with, he helps a girl spin straw into gold, then asks for her firstborn child as payment. Casual. But the OG versions were darker. The story is about a young woman manipulated by her own father (who lies to the king and because medieval HR policies were clearly nonexistent), imprisoned for a skill she doesn’t have, and forced to make a literal deal with the devil to survive. In older versions, Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t just stomp off when his name is guessed. He tears himself in half in rage. Real healthy coping mechanisms, buddy.
The path winds darker still with Hansel and Gretel. Oh, sweet summer children lost in the woods. But let’s be clear—this isn’t some enchanted romp through nature. It’s a horror story set during a famine, where food is scarce, morals are malleable, and parents contemplate child abandonment like it’s just another Tuesday. When Hansel drops breadcrumbs, it’s not charming—it’s desperate. And the gingerbread house? A literal deathtrap, baked with manipulation and frosted with malice. The witch doesn't lure them for laughs; it’s starvation dressed as a fable. A tale that says: when the world fails you, you better learn to survive it—oven and all.
From the oven to the ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’—how toxic is beauty, after all? poisoned by vanity, gender politics, and possibly some questionable fruit hygiene. First, the evil stepmother suffocates Snow with a corset pulled too tight. Then she gives her a poisoned comb. Finally, she offers the apple—the classic hit. But in earlier renditions, the queen doesn’t just want her dead—she wants to eat her. Literally. She demands her lungs and liver to be cooked for dinner. And when Snow wakes up and marries the prince, the queen is punished by being forced to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. Talk about a scorching finale. The message here? Youth and beauty may win, but only after enduring relentless attacks from older women written as jealous, power-hungry witches. Ageism, much?
And while we’re on a roll, let’s talk about some honorable mentions that deserve their own Netflix horror series. The Little Mermaid didn’t just lose her voice for a pair of legs—she lost her tongue and endured constant agony with every step. The prince marries someone else, and she turns into sea foam. Cinderella’s stepsisters? They sliced off bits of their own feet to fit into the glass slipper, and in some versions, they have their eyes pecked out at the wedding. Red Riding Hood? In the French version, she performs a weird cannibalistic communion by eating what remains of her grandmother before being told to strip and join the wolf in bed. A+ for nightmare fuel.
So why were these stories so unhinged? Because they weren’t written to lull children to sleep—they were written to wake them up. To warn them. To mirror the cruelty of a world that didn’t always offer second chances. These tales taught survival, fear, and cunning. They wrapped hard truths in enchanted packaging—morality lessons dressed as myths. The darkness wasn’t accidental; it was intentional, a reflection of the times they were born from.
Fairy tales weren’t born to be pretty. They were born to be powerful. So next time you pick up a classic story, don’t just chase the magic—peer into the shadows. That’s where the real tales were always told.
THE ENDURING POWER OF FOLKTALES
For many of us, our grandparents’ gentle, wise tongues were the first channel through which we connected to our heritage. Their weapon of choice? Folktales! Some of these tales carry generational nostalgia; others feel like a desperate attempt to preserve the past values. No matter how many years go by, glimpses of those early renditions of the past still echo through the books we read and the films we watch. Perhaps that’s the true secret behind their endurance, the way folktales seep into new forms, adapting with each passing century.
As a species obsessed with storytelling, it’s no surprise that folktales have held such collective importance across generations. The human brain is wired to understand and remember information better when it is tied to certain emotions. Folktales have the perfect blend of drama and familiarity to carve their messages deep into a child’s memory, often without the child even realising. They are like an instruction manual carrying all the cultural values and life lessons, passed on as a rite of passage to the younger generation. The worn-out copy of the Panchtantra sitting in one corner of my bookshelf gives a prideful nod of agreement.
It is these folktales that form a significant part of what Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, called the “collective unconscious.” This concept refers to a universal reservoir within the human psyche that contains shared memories, motifs and archetypes inherited from our ancestors. The elements of the collective unconscious not only help explain our deep interconnectedness across cultures, but also offer insight into an individual’s internal world. In fact, certain forms of therapy draw on the folktales or myths a person resonates with to better understand their dominant archetypes.
FANTASTIC BEASTS
Fantastical otherworldly creatures have always been a source of awe in tales that we grew up with. They break the shackles of reality and help us imagine the impossible. While watching Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts, one cannot help but think of all the interesting stories of fantastical beasts that we have grown up with, whether being narrated to by grandparents or in the world of comic books. The purpose of this short article is to recount some of those, their significance and get lost in the world of fantasy and myth.
Reading Amish Tripathi’s The Secret Of The Nagas is where I caught the bug of digging into the folklore of these mesmerizing beings. Nagas are serpent like beings that are often depicted as being half human and half serpent often with a halo of cobra hoods behind their head and reside in the Netherworld (patal lok) which is filled with precious gems. They are associated with water, fertility, sensuality, cosmic order and stability, a bridge between realms, protection and hidden knowledge. Nagaraja is the king of the nagas. Vasuki, the younger brother of Seshanaga is the one that abides in Shiva’s neck. They are salient to the mythological traditions of South Asian and South East Asian cultures and there is a vast visual culture surrounding the nagas where they are depicted in the form of stone carvings in temple steps and gateways in Angkor, elaborate frescos in Indian and Sri Lankan shrines and in temples in Laos and Thailand.
It's fascinating how this legend regarding snakes with extraordinary powers is ubiquitous in the legends and folklore of most cultures and we are all a witness to how it has influenced pop culture and aesthetics. Starting from Nagini of Harry Potter, a Maledictus—a witch struck by a blood curse that transformed her into a snake permanently and a loyal companion and Horcrux to Lord Voldemort, Britney Spears performing with a live snake as a prop in her 2001 V.M.A.s Performance, the various screen adaptations of Medusa the snake-haired Gorgon, the recurring symbol of a snake being used in the Taylor Swift-Kanye West-Kim Kardashian drama and to the various faces of the ‘icchadhari nagin’ played by various bollywood actresses such as Mouni Roy, Sri Devi and Mallika Sherawat. The stealthy slithering movement of the snake symbolises power, sexuality, mystery and induces feelings of fear and desire in us. It speaks to the nascent feelings of lust and an obsession towards the unknown. By embodying the spirit of the snake, we get a chance to embody the traits in us that we bury.
Since times immemorial human beings have been fascinated with flight. The power, the transcendence and the sense of freedom that comes with it. We envied the winged creatures who were be able to access a dimension that we could not. Everytime we watch a kite soar, we wish that we could experience that ecstacy ourselves. The Phoenix, a legendary bird from ancient Greek, Egyptian and medieval folklore, that lives for centuries before setting itself aflame and emerging reborn from its ashes, has always fascinated me. It shows us the contant cycle of renewal in our lives. Fawkes - Dumbledore’s bird is based on these legends.
Celtic sagas (associated with goddess Morrigan), Norse mythology (Odin’s ravens Huginn-thought and Muninn-memory) and Native American folklore, all mention the Raven as a powerful shape shifting entity. These intriguing creatures have always carried the weight of ominous warnings, yet they have so many fascets to them. Everyone who has grown up with Epic Indian tales knows who Jatayu is - the demigod in the form of a vulture who intervened and died trying to save Sita from being abducted by Ravana. One of the most appealing visual representations I have seen of Jatayu is the painting by Raja Ravi Verma which captures the legend in all its magnificent animated fervour, in a way that the epic tale comes to life. Supernatrural birds abound in folktales, fairytales, myths and legends. We associate them with being harbinger’s of good or bad news, of transformation, immortality and freedom.
THE CURSE OF WINTER
Like every other kid, I loved reading about fairytales growing up. Not just the vivid, happy ones but also the ones that were a little dark and queer. The ones where winter wasn’t just cold weather but a kind of spell. Stories of young girls trapped in towers where snow never melted, kingdoms frozen under sleeping curses, forests where nothing would bloom until someone broke the magic. Even movies like The Chronicles of Narnia, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, etc., had the same pattern. Something, or someone, was in despair. And no matter how hopeless it looked, spring always found a way back in.
Looking back at it, the stories feel a little too real now. Because winter doesn’t always look like the snow outside your window or a cosy cup of hot chocolate that you sip while curled up in your warmest blanket, sometimes it’s a creative block that drags on longer than you thought it would. Sometimes it’s feeling stuck in a routine you don't like, or the infamous seasonal depression that kicks in with the gloomy months. And the thing about those kinds of winters is, you can’t force your way out of them.
In a lot of old myths, that’s how it happens. Persephone doesn’t climb out of the underworld overnight. The sakura trees in Japan don't bloom because someone demands it—they wait for their own time. In old Slavic traditions, people burned an effigy of Marzanna, the spirit of winter, to invite the season to move on. They didn’t fight the cold—they just prepared for its end.
Take Sleeping Beauty for example, who was woken up by a quiet moment, a single kiss, after a hundred years of stillness. Or Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast wasn’t freed by strength or strategy, but by learning to love and be loved. The enchanted castle, trapped in endless winter, thawed slowly once the curse lifted. And of course, there’s Narnia, where Lucy pushes open the wardrobe door and finds a world locked in ice. The White Witch’s spell keeps the land "always winter, never Christmas," until Aslan’s return stirs the first signs of thaw. Slowly, icicles drip, snow melts, and rivers start flowing again.
ART QUIZ
- Who was the creator behind the comic book character Chacha Chaudhary, known for being “smarter than a computer”?
- In Indian art, the Pattachitra style, known for detailed mythological storytelling through illustration, originated in which Indian state?
- Amar Chitra Katha, the famous Indian comic book series, was founded by which illustrator and storyteller?
- Which artwork by Henri Matisse was inspired by the Greek myth of Icarus?
- Picasso’s recurring depiction of the Minotaur in his paintings and prints draws from which myth?