Context: Listening to stories about the Dashavatara, 10 forms of the Hindu God, Vishnu, one tale stuck out. The tale of Narasimha, a half-man half-lion creature, that was an avatar who came to defeat a demon king, called hiranyakashipu.The demon king was powerful through deep meditation and devotion, he got a boon, a wish granted, by the Hindu God Brahma. This boon gave him the ability to not die neither inside nor outside his palace, neither day nor night, neither by man or beast, making his immortal in his eyes. However, a rule of the boon was that, you couldn’t wish to be immortal so this was what hiranyakashipu wished for instead. This allowed him to reign terror within the people in his kingdom. His son, Prahlad, was a devote worshipper of Vishnu which hiryanakashipu disliked. As such, he tried to kill his son, but was stopped by divine intervention as Vishnu taking on the form of narasimha. Vishnu, couldn’t allow this to continue, so he transformed into a half-man half-beast creature who killed him on his porch wihich was neither inside or outside at twilight, nullifying the demon king’s boon. A takeaway from this story, from his parents and religious teachings from his grandparents, no matter how bad times are, always side with good.

Interpretation: Growing up in a religious background with stories like this, rather than the traditional stereotypical stories we hear from our grandparents in the States, this tale has a mix of religion and common elements that I see in common tales. There is a hero, a villain, a “damsel-in-distress”, and a sort of overarching theme to it. Furthermore, I find it interesting that man and beast comes to intertwine with one another to defeat an evil power, as I feel there is sometimes a hierarchal downplay between both. Think of a dog and its owner, or humans and zoos, this tale shows that man and beast, at the same level, at the same position work together to bring each other up not take one another down. Compared to European tales, I feel that more common elements like ones we see with Baba Yaga vs other witches in Europe, this tale cannot be replicated or have another character replace it in its idea, significance and meaning.