A flowering tree by A.K RAMANUJAN summary
Answers
Explanation:
A Flowering Tree was commissioned as part of the Vienna New Crowned Hope Festival to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. It takes as its model Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and its themes are magic, transformation and the dawning of moral awareness.
The Story
A Flowering Tree is based on a folktale from the Kannada language of southern India as translated by A.K. Ramanujan.
Kumudha, a poor but beautiful young girl, discovers that she has the magic gift of being able to turn herself into a flowering tree. Wanting to give comfort and support to her old and suffering mother, she asks her sister to help her perform a ceremony that will transform her body into a tree. The sister gathers up the flowers of the tree and Kumudha returns to her human form. They sell the flowers in the town marketplace and give the money without explanation to their mother.
A young Prince, hiding in a tree, spies on Kumudha during one of her transformations. Enchanted and troubled by both her beauty and her magic abilities, he demands of his father, the King, that Kumudha be brought to the palace so that he can marry her.
On the night after their wedding Kumudha enters the bridal chamber only to find the Prince silent and sullen. Several nights pass without him speaking to her or touching her. Finally he makes his demand: she must do her transformation for him. Kumudha, ashamed, resists, but finally relents and performs the ceremony for him.