Uninterrupted storytelling: a lone woman’s toil to take books to the masses through audios

Ramya Vasudevan
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Not all heroes wear capes. Not all heroes are known by their faces. Some manifest as disembodied voices. In the wider world, Ramya Vasudevan chooses to be more heard than seen, thanks to an unstinted commitment to producing audio stories in Tamil.

Ramya has narrated over 2,060 stories, and made them heard on platforms such as Spotify. Irrespective of their tone and theme, the stories are bundled together under one brand identity, “Under The Tree”. This ‘Tree’ grew from a carelessly tossed seed. Back in 2019, Ramya Whats´Apped a friend her story narration based on a book she had just finished reading.

“My friend nudged me to narrate summaries of books, blogs or personalities through audios as she found them quite appealing. She created a WhatsApp group and forwarded one of my audios to it. Soon, it branched out to three more groups [this was at a time when only 256 members could be added to one]. And the pandemic happened, after which the number only grew,” recalls Ramya, an Adyar resident.

Until recently, Ramya had to keep the story recording session for the fag end of the day as she was on a private firm’s payroll. Though quitting that job has freed up time, the overall pattern is intact: she still posts her stories in WhatsApp groups and the Spotify channel around 8.30 a.m. On Mondays and Wednesdays, she narrates Tamil short stories; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, spiritual lessons; Fridays, general short stories; and Saturdays, lessons from any English book of any domain. Besides these, she condenses books specifically for children, and posts them on her channels.

Today, over 700 episodes of her content have been stored in public and school libraries, including the Anna Centenary Library, the Ashok Nagar Government Library and the Avarampalayam Library in Coimbatore across different parts of the State. Three years ago, with her husband’s help, she launched a website (underthetree.me), compiling her audios.

Under The Tree also holds a story-telling contest for persons of all age groups once a year, and distributes prizes to winners. It also honours persons who have made significant strides in literature at the event. “For these events alone, I go looking for sponsors. If nobody turns up, I spend out of my pocket,” she adds.

“Some of those who listen to me have turned volunteers for Under The Tree,” says Ramya and cites the example of Karpagam, a librarian from Coimbatore, who stumbled upon Ramya and her audios during the pandemic and would later set out to Chennai to visit her.

“I requested Ramya to hand me her audio collection, and approached several libraries, including the Anna Centenary Library, and got them stored there. Later, I started a group for like-minded librarians, and circulated her audios there, pressing them to store them in their libraries as well. I also shared them with my readers, went to schools, formed a group of teachers, and submitted her audio collections so as to get students to listen to them. At one point, we even met the Chennai Mayor to get the audios installed across schools in the city,” says Karpagam.

For Sridhar, 64, a retired bank official from Chennai, not a day goes by without listening to Ramya. He maintains a database of her work. He says: “The beauty of her work is mainly her short stories. I sometimes wonder how she manages to find time to do this amid her busy schedule. And imagine the reading she has to do to churn out audios!”