Nagaland Folk Tale – Momola – {Ep.214} – Stories From India – Podcast

Today’s story is a Nagaland folk tale about Momola – a girl who became a mermaid. Also featuring a river that flooded a village just to take revenge and a terrible misunderstanding about who’s on the dinner menu

Welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

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In this episode, we’re doing a folk tale from the eastern state of Nagaland. It’s about a girl who, against her wishes, has to marry a river. The offspring from a union between a human and a river, are mermaids if you hadn’t already guessed that.

A young girl, whose name was Momola lived with her mother, whose name was Azuo. In sticking to the tradition of naming characters on the show, the names represent the roles they play. Azua means mother in Nagaland. 

And on this fine and sunny day they were going to have a little mother-daughter time together.

You could argue that they were already living together, and spending every waking moment together so what was so special about mother-daughter time? But that’s not the way they saw it.

So it was perfectly fine for them to be going fishing together today, just as they had gone to watch the hornbill festival yesterday and the Kene or Naga wrestling match the day before or the concert the day before that.

And today’s fishing promised to be very rewarding. Everyone in town had been talking about how the fish in the river were really jumping. And when an angler came by, the fish would come to fisticuffs to compete for the bait’s attention.

“With a situation like this, I bet the fish will be eager to jump into our Creel – which is really the basket used to catch fish.”

Momola was excited. She loved fish, in all forms. Fried, baked, salted, grilled, with a side of fries, without a side of fries.

But she was a cautious girl – “Let’s not count our roosterfish before they are catched”

Her mother promptly corrected her “caught, not catched”. Or alternatively if she was deliberately aiming to make a joke, it wasn’t all that funny. But it was understandable – given the absence of a dad in her life, no wonder she wasn’t making good dad jokes. Well never mind, one of these days, Azuo added that she would get some of Momola’s uncles and their families to visit. Maybe that might help her learn.

Both the mother and the daughter’s mouths were watering at the prospect of all the fish they were going to eat for lunch and dinner and probably breakfast the next day.

And when they got there, the riverbank was practically empty.

Having heard all the stories of abundance of fish they were surprised that there wasn’t a delegation from the Limca Book of Records to ensure that a record was indeed being broken here. It should have seemed a little fishy to them.

Maybe we need to offer the river a loaf of bread or something? I heard some guy in the middle east did it and got a cartful of fish for it. He got all famous before they nailed him for it.

Azuo shook her head and decided world history was another thing her daughter needed to learn. She’d line up a teacher for that too, Momola’s aunts knew all kinds of stories.

This was going to turn into a regular family reunion. Azuo thought. Maybe she should manufacture a special occasion to celebrate it.

Anyway, back to the river, and why all the fish were missing. They used their best bait, but there wasn’t a single bite. 

Momola’s face grew long, and Azuo couldn’t bear to see that. So she did what she knew usually worked in such circumstances. She prayed.

She prayed to the river. But she knew that the river wasn’t a God or anything who would provide blessings and superpowers in exchange for nothing. This river was a purely transactional creature. It would want something in exchange. She had already offered bait and that was refused, so she upped her game. She offered to pray everyday, but the river still seemed skeptical.

So then Azuo raised her offer to a terrible extent. She promised Momola’s hand in marriage to the river. That worked. There was a sudden tsunami of fish that all washed ashore at their feet. They were all kinds and colors. And Momola and her mother were delighted. Amidst the joy of receiving all that fish, they completely forgot that Momola had just gotten engaged to the River.

And later, basking in the sun, after a hearty meal of fish stew, the promise of marriage was a distant thought. But they found that calling off an engagement to the river is not that simple. Momola’s mother tried to talk to the river and explained that her daughter couldn’t actually marry a river. She had only done it for the fish. Besides, it was a ridiculous idea. Imagine, how could they even have the ceremony? How would they even communicate with each other?

So wouldn’t the river please run along and find a nice river to join up? She had heard of the Blue Nile and the White Nile – best match ever! The river was sure to find a match – a partner that was the same species at least.

But the river didn’t like that answer. It rose in height, and continued doing so. Momola and her mom looked on in horror as they realized that the river was getting dangerously close to flooding their village. 

They rushed for higher ground. So did all the other villagers. They landed at the peaks of 3 local mountains along with some of their cattle. Perfectly as they had rehearsed in their emergency evacuation fire drills. The animals were also carefully selected, they had a pair of each species. 

And the river did not rise further.

Azuo screamed at the river. There was standing room only on what was left of the mountain peaks, so she had one foot in the river. You could say she was trampling down on the treacherous river but that might not be a very accurate description. She had double crossed it, and then.

“Well what do you want exactly?” 

And the river answered! “Mo-mo-mo” was the sound it seemed to make.

Don’t stutter, I haven’t got all day. If you want Momos, I can’t help you. You just flooded my kitchen and everyone else’s kitchen and all the restaurants in town. Order them on Swiggy yourself.

“Momola” the river said, but the last syllable might have been a mispronunciation when it intended to say “Momomo” again.

Well clearly that answered Azuo’s question about communication earlier.

Azuo was in no mood to agree – she was going to put her foot down. The one that was in the river of course. But the rest of the village gave her a stern look upon realizing that they were in this predicament because Azuo had double crossed the river.

So societal pressure piled on, and finally Momola’s mom gave in. The marriage would happen as promised. No one bothered asking Momola for her opinion though. Yeah, it was that kind of a century.

But then when she turned around and looked through the crowd, Momola wasn’t there. She had gone missing. In fact the last time Azuo had seen Momola was right before the river stopped rising. Azuo swam frantically around their little mountain-peak-turned-island, and then checked the other two mountain peaks-turned islands as well. But there was no sign of Momola.

In desperation, she swam back in the direction of the village and where the original river bank stood. And that’s when she saw the monsters. There were two of them. Enormous human-sized fish. Actually no. Only one of them appeared to be a human-sized fish. The other was a human sized half-human half fish. A mermaid. While the mermaid’s top half was recognizable. It was Momola.

“Holy Carp! What have they done to you? I’m going to save you” Azuo screamed and rushed for the other fish.

“No, Azuo. Stop! We’re friends” Momola replied. And Azuo realized that suddenly she could understand her daughter speaking mermaidese. Or maybe her daughter had swallowed a babblefish.

But more important matters first. “Friends? With friends like these who needs anemones?”

Momola didn’t care. She said that she had found true love. She was the river’s bride now. And this fish was just her bodyguard. She was happy and contented, and she would visit Azuo every chance she got. Maybe like her 50th birthday, which was just around the corner – coming up in only 5 or 6 years.

Becoming a mermaid had transformed Momola. Of course, that’s pretty obvious. But I mean it had transformed her psychologically as well, not just physically. And Azuo came to the sad realization that she was all alone. It was not like she could just go live with her daughter any time she wanted. That might have been possible if her daughter had been married to a regular human being living on land. But she resigned to her fate, because it looked like Momola was indeed happy.

She did manage to have somewhat regular contact with her daughter though. Often she’d gather worms and take them down to the riverbank and scatter them there.

But the big reunion only happened around Azuo’s 50th birthday. Uncles and Aunts who, a long time ago, were supposed to teach Momola dad jokes and 

Momola thoguht it was a little insensitive that the menu at this party included fish, crab, lobsters, shrimp.

Momola arrived there with her children. Her children were completely fish like in appearance, though you might have expected them to be three quarters fish and a quarter human. But they could talk like humans. I guess that ability was passed down with Momola’s genes. Appropriately she had named her children Nemo and Dory. The relation to the Disney/Pixar movies was purely coincidental.

Dory tugged on Momola’s fin and said – “Look mom, there’s my friend Crusty the Crab. He goes to school with me. Why is he lying there on a plate with those sliced vegetables and fruits around him? And there’s my other friend – Lobby the Lobster. He seems to be almost sleeping in that hot bath that someone kindly put him in.”

Momola decided she needed to have a serious conversation with Azuo about the menu. Meanwhile could Nemo and Dory hand around in this little aquarium right here?

Momola found Azuo and convinced her to see it from her point of view. Azuo said that it was too late, most of the other guests had already eaten. But more importantly, where were her grandchildren? Azuo was eager to hug them – she had never even seen them before.

So Momola went off to fetch them. But the aquarium was empty. She ran around frantically, searching for her kids. But Finding Nemo and Finding Dory was hard. What made it especially so was that Momola still had the tail of a fish, so navigating on land wasn’t very easy.

Finally she reached the area where her uncles and aunts were gathered. They were all laughing and gleaming.

One of her closest Uncles, Azuo’s oldest brother, at that point made a remark to the crowd that the clownfish tasted funny and the Blue Tang, was tasty, and both were angling to be eaten it seemed like. The crowd laughed, but Momola’s heart sank.

She found the plates and found that he children had indeed been eaten up. She asked if any trace remained of them. But no, her Uncles and Aunts had eaten the bones too. Except, there were two tiny bones – one from Nemo, the other from Dory. Momola’s oldest aunt refused to part with them. She was saving them for the cat she said.

But Momola flew into a rage and demanded her bones back. And when she got them it became clear what she wanted with those. You see, she had learned a bit of magic from the river. She couldn’t do much herself, but she gave it her best shot.

And it worked! Kind of. From the bones, she was able to create Nemo and Dory again. But they were tiny! Bite-sized, she thought to herself and immediately shuddered at her own choice of words.

She rushed home with her children, because some of her other relatives were already eyeing her children with a gluttonous eye. 

The river naturally wondered why Nemo and Dory looked smaller than before.

Momola said that it was because her Uncles were hurt from not having met her for so long.

You see there’s a belief in that particular Chang tribe in Nagaland that Uncles must not be hurt, or bad things happen. Well, the river simply accepted it and moved on. Well as a river, it was always moving on. So nothing surprising there.

Momola didn’t really go back to her human family after that. At least not the Uncles and Aunts. But rumor has it she kept meeting Azuo at least, because Azuo was the sole person who understood the pain a mother experiences when she finds she has lost her child.

That’s it for this time.

Some notes on the show

In the original story Momola had only one child who was a Mong fish. But I couldn’t resist the Nemo and Dory reference, so I made it two.

The Chang tribe do not hunt the Mong fish, as they believe these are humans transformed into fish.

Check out FeedSpot’s podcast rankings. Happy to report that Stories From India is at the top of the list of the Best Indian Mythology Podcasts! Thank you for all your support in making this happen!

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

I’ve had some people independently ask me for a story on Yoga, and some others request a story about the origin of Yoga. So in the next episode, we’ll do a story about both – because you see Shiva has something to do with Yoga’s origin. How exactly? Wait till next week to find out

Feedback

Thank you all for the comments on Social Media and on Spotify’s Q&A! I can’t directly reply to the questions there, but I’ll address them here on this show.

Vaishnavi, Rajul, Bala, Juhee and Hariprasad, Vamsi and Amit, Dr. Krishna and ‘Anu – thank you for your kind words of support – it means a lot to me!

Meghana – thank you for the lovely feedback – I think your daughter might possibly be my youngest listener!

Juhee – thank you for bringing up something I missed mentioning! There is indeed a temple dedicated to Barbarik in Rajasthan and another in Gujarat, near Ahmedabad. Barbarik is known by a couple of different names in those states – Khaatoo Shyam and Baliyadev.

Hariprasad – thanks for the feedback, and I’ll get to the episode on Ramanujacharya soon.

Many of you have asked to go back to the Ramayana, to Chandrakanta, to Akbar Birbal, and to Vikram Betaal. So I’ll be doing all of those as well.

Navya – thank you for the suggestion on Kanaklata – I’ll work on that story in an upcoming epsiode.

Rez and Amit – noted your feedback and I will try and create a few more bonus episodes from time to time.

Vamsi – good question regarding episode 208. The folk tale doesn’t really say anything other than Dyani was expelled from home and from the village. But knowing that she was in her advanced years, it’s unlikely she slowly raised other young girls over several years, and lured them into a false sense of security before brutally murdering them. 

Also Vamsi noted your request to hear about the God of Time. In Indian mythology, there are actually not one but multiple Gods and Goddesses who can control time. You could even count myself in that, given how I’m practically a Time lord, being able to leap back and forth whenever I want. But what I can do is to cover a very interesting Time traveling story from Indian Mythology. And it features Balaram’s father-in-law

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Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time!