A new picture book unearths the story of a mythical creature called the Asunam, known to have existed once upon a time in the Western Ghats
Illustrations courtesy/Rajiv Eipe, Harpercollins India
Song of the Asunam (HarperCollins India) written by CG Salamander and illustrated by Rajiv Eipe is the story of a boy named Vetri, who encounters a mythical creature called the Asunam one day. Afraid of its enormity, the villagers insist that he kill it, but Vetri decides to take it back to its home safe. The book explores their journey together.
Sangam literature (the earliest group of texts of Tamil literature) notes the Asunam as “formidable creatures with just one weakness — their love for music,” Salamander tells us. They were said to have existed in the Kurinji region. “The Asunam would venture out of their nests to listen to the birds chirp and dance to the tunes of nature. They were also sensitive to loud noises. A loud enough noise could startle or even kill them.” Salamander adds that our ancestors are believed to have hunted the creatures to extinction, “by playing a loud drum beat after luring them out with melodious music.”
A panel introducing Vetri
Eipe’s depiction of the creature in vibrant rainbow colours, with ‘shimmering scales’, reflects its magnificence. He tells us, “Beyond the essential components in Salamander’s description of the enormous wings, serpent neck, and sharp claws, there was lots of room to experiment with features inspired from different species of birds, in different proportions and combinations.” Eipe reveals that he and Salamander arrived at the colours while they were working on thumbnail layouts. These were to act as a plot device where bright one would “depict vitality, and, conversely, faded and dull colours would depict illness or poor health” of the creature.
Asunam sketched by Eipe
While the two decided to keep the designs of the architecture and clothing “simple, rudimentary and nondescript”, some details contain fascinating little stories. For instance, Vetri’s grandmother’s journal hints at the ways hunting stories were recorded in the ancient time. Moreover, Vetri’s lyre is in the shape of a fish. Eipe shares that this was because Salamander’s script described the lyre as a “Yazh”.
During his research, Eipe discovered some recreations of the ancient harp in Tamil music. Some were shaped like a peacock; some like a yali, while others like bows or fish. “We thought the more elaborate ones would be unwieldy for Vetri to lug around, and decided on a yazh of simple, portable size and design, given the amount of running around and travelling he does in the story,” he says.
CG Salamander
The journey forms an important part of the book. It establishes the relationship between Vetri and the Asunam, and portrays Vetri’s ordeal through the dangerous forests to save his friend. The text features ‘the great river’, ‘sharp cliffs’, ‘enchanted woods’, ‘the valley of screams’ and that ‘of lost sounds’ which the two cross. For Salamander, Kodaikanal, where he grew up, was the point of reference for this landscape.
Rajiv Eipe
Meanwhile, Eipe used observations from his travels and treks to depict it, “to give it some sense of authenticity and to believably situate the magical and mythical creatures (and the real ones—birds, amphibians, fungi — equally magical) we encounter through the story.” This is not the first time the writer and the illustrator have worked on mythical creatures together, and certainly not the last. The book is the first in the Lost Creature series. They believe that India has a wealth of such stories waiting to be told. “I like the idea of breathing new life into these stories, as well as using creatures from Indian mythology in our works of fantasy, in lieu of elves, vampires and werewolves from the West,” concludes Salamander.
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