A Flowering Tree

ACT I.
SCENE 1.
The Storyteller introduces the two main characters: Kumudha, a beautiful girl from a poor family, and the Prince
of the nearby palace. Kumudha wants to find a way to ease the hard life of her mother and sister, who work in the
fields. She prays for the power to transform herself into a flowering tree. Kumudha asks her sister to help her
through a precise ceremony requiring two pitchers of water, and to gather the blossoming flowers from her
branches. With another two pitchers of water, Kumudha returns to her human form. The sisters weave the
flowers into garlands, which they sell in the town marketplace near the palace.

ACT I.
SCENE 2.
Kumudha and her sister continue the flowering-tree ritual, selling flowers at the market and giving the money to
their mother without divulging its source. The idle young Prince follows the sisters home and, hiding in a tree,
watches Kumudha’s transformation. Returning to the palace, he explains to his father that the girl unsettles him,
and he wants to marry her. The King summons Kumudha’s mother to the palace.

ACT I.
SCENE 3.
At the palace, the King commands the old woman to bring her younger daughter to him. The old woman can’t
figure out how Kumudha could have come to the King’s attention. Confused with shame, the old woman returns
home and beats her daughters. The girls finally explain how they have been making money at the market. Their
mother begs their forgiveness.

ACT I.
SCENE 4.
Kumudha and the Prince are alone on their wedding night. But he is cold and distant, and will not touch her. After
a few nights of neglect, Kumudha confronts him. The Prince demands that she turn into the flowering tree, there
in the bedroom. Kumudha is embarrassed, but agrees, and the Prince assists her with pitchers of water, and she
performs the transformation for him. They make love in a bed of flowers.

ACT II.
SCENE 1.
The prince’s jealous sister hides in the bedchamber and discovers Kumudha’s powers of transformation. When
the Prince is away, she forces Kumudha to perform the ritual for a group of her friends. Kumudha asks only that
they treat her with respect, and follow the procedures of the ceremony. But after Kumudha turns into a tree, they
break her branches, tear off her flowers, and abandon her in mid-transformation. Reduced to a stump of flesh
with no arms or legs, neither tree nor woman, Kumudha crawls into a gutter. Months pass, and the Prince
desperately searches for his wife. Plagued by remorse, he becomes an ascetic, and wanders through the
country. Kumudha, meanwhile, is rescued by a group of travelling beggar minstrels, who incorporate her into their
act because of her beautiful singing voice.

ACT II.
SCENE 2.
Kumudha and the Prince, both drastically changed and lost from each other, sing separately of their mutual
longing. The Prince’s sister, who had been so cruel to Kumudha, is now queen of a distant town. The band of
minstrels visits that same town, carrying Kumudha in her disfigured form. Kumudha sings with the minstrels.

ACT II.
SCENE 3.
Sick and emaciated, the Prince arrives at his sister’s palace. She is shocked at his appearance, and tries to find
some way to comfort and heal him. One day in the marketplace, the queen hears the sublime song of the
misshapen tree-woman, and, hoping it might help the prince, she orders her to be brought to the palace. The tree
torso is bathed and dressed and brought to the Prince in his bedroom. Kumudha presses against him, he hears
the sound of her voice, and, revived at last, he completes Kumudha’s ceremony to transform her back into her
human self
A Flowering Tree: A Woman's Tale

"A Flowering Tree" is a short story written by A. K. Ramanujan in his 1997 book A Flowering
Tree and Other Folk Tales From India. In actuality, it is a Kannada folklore told by women
which is translated by A. K. Ramanujan to English. The story was collected in several versions in
the Karnataka region over the span of twenty years by Ramanujan and his fellow folklorists It is a
woman-centered tale and attempts to establish a sisterhood between women and nature. This
has been regularly done by many feminist writers.[1]
Like most folktales from around the world, A Flowering Tree synthesizes two discrete elements:
first, an impossible narrative (a girl turns into a tree; a prince marries a peasant), and second,
mythic archetypes which resonate deeply with all of us, no matter what our beliefs.[2] According to
Ramannujan himself who analysed the folk tale while translating it - "It is a story of woman's
ecology and vulnerability of her emerging sexuality..."
This was published posthumously and edited by Stuart Blackburn and Alan Dundes along with
other folktales compiled and translated by Ramanujan. His story was adapted into an opera
by John Adams in 2006.

Plot Summary
There lived a poor woman in a certain town with her two daughters. The younger daughter
decided to help her impoverished family. She turned into a beautiful tree by performing a strange
ritual with her elder sister. They carefully performed the ritual which required two pitchers of
water - one to transform the younger to a tree and the other back to human form. Her elder sister
plucked flowers from the transformed tree making sure that she doesn't damage any other part of
the tree. She then converts her younger sister to human form. They weaved the fragrant flowers
into garlands and sold them at the King's palace. They decided to keep this a secret from their
mother and saved the money for future.
One day the prince discovers those garlands in the palace and gets curious about its(flower's)
origin. He followed the girls back to their house. Next morning at dawn, he went to their house
and hid himself behind a tree and eventually saw the secret origin of flowers. He asked his
parents (King and Queen) to marry the girl that sold flowers and told them the secret. The
minister summoned the girls' mother and presented the proposal. She couldn't help but agree.
Later at her house, the younger daughter had to demonstrate how she transformed into a tree to
pacify her angry mother.
After the wedding, several nights passed without him speaking to her or touching her. Finally he
makes his demand: she must do her transformation for him. Ashamed, she resists, but finally
relents and performs the ceremony for him. Her envious sister-in-law watched her do the
transformation on one night. She forced her to transform into a tree and broke her branches
while plucking the flowers. They also ignored the water ritual and poured water on her
indifferently, here and there. When the princess changed to the human form, she had no hands
and feet. She had only half a body. She was a wounded carcass. She crawled into a gutter.
Next morning a cotton wagon driver spotted her and rescued her from gutter. He covered her
naked body with a turban cloth. He left her at a ruined pavilion in a town. Her husband's elder
sister was married to the King of this town. The palace servants informed the queen about her.
She was brought to the palace, bathes, healed and kept at the main door as a "thing" for
decoration. Meanwhile, the prince distraught at her wife's disappearance assumes that she left
him due to his arrogance. Full of remorse, he turned into a beggar and wandered across the
country.
After a long time, the prince haggard and unrecognizable reached her elder sister's town. In
shock, the Queen recognized her brother and brought him to the palace where he was bathed
and fed. He never uttered a single word. His sister was worried and tried all sorts of ways to
make him speak. One day she sent the half body of his wife in a hope that the beauty would
move him. He immediately recognized his lost wife. She told him the complete incident. She
asked him to perform the ritual and fix all her broken branches and then transform her back to
human form in a hope that she would be normal again. The method worked. The Queen(his elder
sister) bid them farewell.
The King (prince's father) was overjoyed at the return of his long lost son and daughter-in-law.
After discovering the bitter truth, the king had seven barrels of burning lime poured into a great
pit and threw his youngest daughter into it. All the people who saw this said to themselves, "After
all, every wrong has its punishment."

Themes
Ecology
According to A. K. Ramanujan, one of its resonates itself with our present concerns with ecology
and conservation. Each time the younger daughter becomes a tree, she begs the person who is
with her to treat it/her gently and not to pluck anything more than the flowers. The warning for not
plucking more than what is required is in coherence with the practice of sustainable
development. There is also the suggestion that a tree is vulnerable to careless handling like a
woman. A tree that has come to flower or fruit will not be cut down; it is treated as a mother, a
woman who has given birth.
This poem, ‘Ecology’ is taken from Ramanujan’s third volume of poems, ‘Second Sight’,
published in 1986. The speaker seems to be the poet himself or some imaginary person who is
loyally devoted to his mother. He is very angry because his mother has a severe attack of
migraine; a very bad kind of headache, often causing a person to vomit; which is caused by the
fragrance of the pollen of the flower of the Red Champak every time it is in bloom. The fragrance
is heavy and suffocating as the yellow pollen spreads everywhere. Even the doors of the
speaker’s house cannot prevent the strong smell from entering the house. The walls of the house
are able to absorb almost everything-the sounds, sights, the human voices, the harsh sounds
produced when new shoes are worn. But they cannot stop the fog of pollen dust from the
Champak trees.
The loving son therefore decides to cut down the tree, but he is prevented from doing so by his
mother who sees the positive side of the tree in her garden. She says that the tree is as old as
her and had been fertilized by the droppings of a passing bird by chance which is considered to
be a very good omen. The positive side of it is that the tree provides many basketful of flowers to
be offered to her gods and to ‘her daughters and daughter’s daughters’ every year, although the
tree would give a terrible migraine to one line of cousins as a legacy. The yellow pollen fog is the
yellow dust of pollen carried in the air which is thick and heavy like fog which covers the earth.
This poem portrays Ramanujan’s strong interest in the family as a very important theme of his
poetic craft. His memories of the past would inevitably bring pictures of his family, especially his
mother who is self sacrificing. There is also a reference to his Hindu heritage as he mentions the
gods and the ancient beliefs in the poem. The sense of irony is indicated when the mother very
angrily protests the idea of cutting down the tree even though she is suffering very badly from the
migraine caused by it. She has a kind of emotional attachment to the tree, saying that it is as old
as herself.
‘Ecology is a poem which could be read as one single sentence. However, each stanza has one
particular idea. There is a casual connection between the ideas and they flow from one stanza to
the next. ‘Flash her temper’; an instance of the use of irony because she is very angry at the idea
of having the tree cut down. The actual meaning of the word ‘Ecology’ is not followed here but
the poet seems to convey the thought that a particular kind of tree may have both negative and
positive factors and therefore it need not be pulled down.
Ecofeminism
This folktale shows a strong connection between woman and nature. The metaphoric
connections between a tree and a woman are many and varied in the culture. A relevant one
here is that the words for "flowering" and "menstruation" are the same in languages like Sanskrit
and Tamil. In Sanskrit, a menstruating woman is called a puspavati, "a woman in flower," and in
Tamil, pūttal ("flowering") means menstruation. Menstruation itself is a form and a metaphor for
a woman's special creativity. Thus a woman's biological and other kinds of creativity are
symbolized by flowering. In this tale, the metaphor is literalized and extended. The protagonist
literally becomes a tree, producing flowers without number over and over again, as the occasion
requires. It is her special gift, which she doesn't wish to squander or even display.
Women's sexuality and vulnerability
Ramanujan also points out that the ritual relating to her flowering symbolizes sexual
activity/ritual. It becomes a display of her spectacular talent arouse his husband, so that they can
sleep together on the flowers from her body. In a way, people began to treat her as a thing,
asking her "to make a spectacle of herself" by displaying her secret gift. Even the first time when
she herself becomes a tree to sell her flowers she makes of herself a commodity.
The woman is most open to injury when she is most attractive, when she is exercising her gift of
flowering. Each time she becomes a tree, she begs the one who is pouring the water to be
careful not to hurt her. Yet, paradoxically, when she is mutilated, she cannot be healed directly.
She can be made whole only by becoming the tree again, becoming vulnerable again, and
trusting her husband to graft and heal her broken branches. Symbolically speaking, the tree
isolates and gives form to her capacity to put forth flowers and fragrance from within, a gift in
which she could glory, as well as to the vulnerability that goes with it. It expresses a young
woman's desire to flower sexually, and otherwise, as well as the dread of being ravaged that the
very gift brings with it.
Woman's place in society
In women's tales like this one, the true antagonist as well as the helper for a woman is another
woman, just as in the men's tales the hero battles always with an older male, a father-figure,
often with brothers. In this folk tale, she is helped by her mother (perhaps), sister, elder sister-in-
law but ravaged by her younger sister-in-law. This folk tale questions a basic need of any woman
(or man) - security. She is safe with her own sister, maybe with her mother, but not quite with a
newly wedded husband who cares more for a display of her talent than for her safety, and most
certainly not with her teenage sister-in-law or her mother-in-law. She is safe only with a married
sister-in-law (who is probably not threatened or envious) and, lastly, with a husband who, through
an experience of loss, has matured enough to care for her as a person.
The story clearly points out the tortures faced by women are faced in the society because of her
gender. She is supposed to be obedient to her husband and in-laws. It is pointed out that a
woman is always under control of someone in every phase of her life. During her childhood by
her parents (here her mother) and by her husband and in-laws after her marriage. She is made
to do things without her approval. In this story, she transformed herself into a tree five times out
of which only two times by her free-will - the first and the last time.
The objectification of women is another strong issue hidden in this tale. After the younger
daughter was ravaged by her sister in law she is reduced to a thing. Even before that, she is
continuously demanded to transform into tree just for pleasure - her emotions and wishes were of
no regards whatsoever.