Victoria Memorial: Did Ram and Sita ever fight over their children? Yes they did, at least in the Assamese version of the Ramayan.

Many such little-known stories about the epics were revealed by author Devdutt Pattanaik at the Tata Steel Junior Kolkata Literary Meet, co-organised by Victoria Memorial Hall in association with The Telegraph.

The story goes that Sita started missing her twins, Luv and Kush, while living underground and sent the nagas or snakes to bring them back to her. But Ram wanted the boys in Ayodhya and thus a fight ensued between the two till it was decided that the kids deserved to stay with both.

Pattanaik started off by differentiating between " itihas" and "puran". " Itihas in Sanskrit does not mean history. It means a tale with the storyteller being part of the plot. Ramayan and Mahabharat are itihas as their writers Valmiki and Veda Vyasa were part of the epics. A puran is told by a person who was not part of the plot," said the author of The Girl who Chose and The Boys who Fought, child-friendly versions of the epics.

The Girl who Chose is Pattanaik's version of the Ramayan. "The title comes from Sita who makes five choices," he said. The Boys who Fought is a take on Mahabharat with the title inspired from the wars that the Pandavas had to fight.

Speaking to an audience that comprised mostly schoolchildren of different age groups, Pattanaik dealt with the origin of some words, such as katha, as well as regional versions of the epics.

"Nobody knows how old our epics are. There are at least 30 to 40 versions in Sanskrit with many differences in the stories," he added.

"The story on the laxman rekha and Sita crossing it was an invention of Krittibas who wrote the Bengali version of Ramayan 500 years ago," Pattanaik revealed.

He spoke about how stories from the epics travelled to South-East Asia and even inspired art forms such as shadow puppetry.

Stories from the Mahabharat also kept pouring out. The author dwelt on the Pandavas' relationship with the forests and how Arjun and Bheema got a drubbing from Kirata and an "old monkey" respectively for their arrogance.

" Mahabharat is about the Pandavas and Kauravas fighting for a bone and Krishna wanting them to share it," was the author's take. In The Boys Who Fought, the five brothers and their 100 cousins are sketched as emojis.

The session was also replete with stories of animals from the epics. From how Sarama's four pups went to Yamraj, the god of death, to how four parrots were hatched on the Kurukshetra grounds while the battle was in progress. Pass these stories on, was the author's message to his audience.

The junior section of the literary meet was co-organised by Think Arts.