Rasa

Published on 2nd October, 2016, in Mid-day. Typically, in India, we refer to an actor in a play or a character in a book as 'patra' which literally means vessel. Why? To understand this, we perhaps have to appreciate the two distinct ways of telling a story: the Western way and the Indian way. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, student of Plato, teacher of Alexander, is considered the fountainhead of the Western approach to narratives. His 'poetics' looks at narratives very intellectually, focusing on one character, the hero and his transformation following a dramatic event. Here, storytelling begins by paying attention to the idea, which is ..