The menus are handed out but we’re engrossed in conversation. We ’ re talking about the pluralism of Indian traditions — Buddhist, Jain, Brahmanical — and how they spread to south-east Asia through trade routes and other ways. As a historian, she instinctively looks for historical trends in the mundane. She was telling us, for instance, about how the “ Wayang ” shadow puppet shows in Indonesia weave different local legends into the basic story of the rama-katha .
“One of the most interesting things I’ve found is the way this story lends itself to being the recipient of local cultures. It creates different cultures, so you have what we call many Ramayanas, with the changing adaptation of the stories.”
Her regret, she says, is that so much emphasis in modern times is put “only on the Valmiki version both in India and outside, that we’ve forgotten the fact that there were and are multiple versions.” What is interesting is not just that the Valmiki version travelled all over but “how people varied the story to express their concerns in their own versions”.