Age: 21
Date of Performance: 02/24/25
Language: English, Malayalam
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Main Transcription:
“Alright, do you have any experience, personal experiences, with any of these minor genres of folklore?”
“One comes to mind. When I was young, I used to water the plants, my mom’s plants, in the back garden. And we had to fill the bucket, and then go scoop it [the water] up, and put it in the pot. I would always fill it all the way up and struggle to bring it out, and my mom used to say ‘Malayalam,’ which is a language I speak where I’m from. “
….
“So the saying was: ‘Madiyan mala chumakkum (a lazy person tries to move a mountain)’”
“Okay, you’re going to have to write this down”
”I’ll write it down for you, haha. And what this means loosely is: ‘A lazy fellow moves a mountain,’ which, basically, I think, relates to this folklore tale of these, like, two girls, and there was water in these two glass jars, and the one girl, the wise girl, like, put of lots of small pebbles to make the it [the water] rise, but the lazy girl took a big pebble, threw it in, and broke the glass. Which means, you are meant to take, like, or put smart effort into what you do and try to advance in small intervals.”
“A work smarter, not harder-type thing.”
“Hahaha, yeah.”
“Do you think this was a formative experience for you? Like, how was that?”
“Yeah, I mean, she would say it a lot for many things, because a lot of times, there were many things I would try to get over with quickly, but she would repeat that and it sticks.“
“So it was a recurring thing?”
“Yeah.”
Context:
My interviewee first heard the saying from his mother during his childhood, and since then, it seems that it has maintained relevance throughout his upbringing. It is interesting that his experience carrying the bucket of water parallels the story of the two girls filling their glass jars, which I am sure is not coincidence. I tried looking deeper into the tale itself, and it seems to be a retelling of an old Aesop fable, though I have yet to make a confirmation on that connection given how little information there is. It could be that the tale, given in Malayalam, could be a local reinterpretation or retelling in India of an older story that could have originated elsewhere, but that is only a theory.
Analysis:
The proverb, and the tale it derives from, assert that overloading the self with work will not lead to genuine change, and that change itself comes in increments. Anyone who has tried to transform themselves by changing every aspect of their life, or ‘moving a mountain,’ eventually fails and ‘breaks the glass.’ I find this sentiment holds relevance in a hyper-optimized and demanding world where people are expected to make radical changes, ‘moving mountains,’ in their lives with the promise of wealth, social status, success, etc. Most of the time, change is difficult, but it becomes impossible when you pile everything on yourself like a mountain.