“Ok, with respect to religious folklore – basically it revolves around the stories of the various gods that we have. The various thousands of gods that we have – but the two biggest stories are, um, actually two wars. The first one is called Mahabharat and the second one is called, Ramayan. Mahabharat is the war between…um…I forget the names, but it’s basically a war between the good gods and the bad gods – well the demons, I guess, obviously. And Ramayan, as the name suggests, is, well there’s an Indian god by the name of Rama. And it’s basically his war, where – the story goes like, he has a wife named Sita. And then Sita gets kidnapped by, um, an enemy king by the name of Ravana. And then Ravan takes her to Sri Lanka – which is where his kingdom is and then Rama decides to take revenge and um, take his wife back. And then a war ensues, which is what we call Ramayan. And of course, Rama rescues Sita, and takes her back to his home kingdom, Ayodhya.”

While my informant began this explanation with respect to religious folklore, the more I listened to it, the more I realized that it was better suited as a myth of narrative folklore. It was the morals and honor for the characters within the narrative that formulated the religion as he expounded upon. He learned this story from his parents and religious officials as he grew up in Mumbai. I find it especially inclusive to see how stories influence entire cultures all around the world!