India, Aug. 24 -- Why do certain stories survive? The ones that endure tend to hold a bit of humour, pathos, the element of surprise and, often, a quick, pithy lesson in what it means to be human. Those that do it best, couch all this in entertaining metaphor. And so a tale about mermaids in Puducherry becomes a parable on the power of the sea. A story about why trees stopped roaming around offers a curt reminder that there is a price to be paid for turning a forest against you. The tales that live on the longest tend to address our deepest desires and greatest fears, our flaws, follies and misdeeds. Working across India, the Centre for Contemporary Folklore (CCF) is now in the process of pulling some of these together, onto a single platfo...