Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik

Valmiki composed the Ramayana and it is still popular though no one reads the old 2,000-year-old Sanskrit version, nor the 1,000-year-old regional classics in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Awadhi. What we usually access as colloquial folk versions, often transmitted orally, known as the Ramakatha. In Odisha there have been many such local versions of the Ramayana with subplots that are unique to the region. One of these subplots involves a rooster.