June 10, 2006

How long has it been that someone said: “Let me tell you a story” How long it has been since you have asked someone to tell you a story? Long enough! Some of you would scoff in horror to this question saying that stories are meant for really young children, something associated with one’s Bacchpan. If you think that you have out grown the age when children listen to stories or are too cool for them, then think again! The art, of story telling and the urge to listen to a good story stay with us for life. The moral messages and values embedded in stories heard in our childhood form the mental, emotional and moral landscapes of who we are.

Storytelling has been a way of entertaining and amusing, while at the same time passing on values and creating a sense of community heritage.

Tales of adventure, of events that happened long ago, family stories, folklores and fables, came into being, as people shared time and words together. Every person has an interesting story to tell, and stories thus are the living, breathing accounts of human experiences.

Stories have been here ever since the dawn of civilisation. In the beginning, stories have been narrated by cavemen sitting in a circle in front of the fire to ward off boredom, beasts and ghosts. Similarly, parents and grandparents used to gather awe-stricken children around the fireplace or around their beds in blankets to take them on a trip thousands of miles back in time.

Those days are bygones. Today stories are being told traditionally by your grandparents at home or by teachers in classrooms in kiva arrangement.

Story-telling isn’t exactly a dying art but has simply transformed into other formats. Television, comic books, plays even the day to day conversation, banters and gossips are an evolved form of story-telling; it’s just that the characters, events and situations are more real than fictional. Oral history and literature is also being immensely collected and published so that the stories are not lost, but some of the essence has been lost in terms of the values these stories used to convey.

Stories woe children and adults alike

Unlike the assumption that stories are only for kids, they have the potential to equally entice adults. I observed the proof of this when I attended a workshop on the art of story-telling by a Canadian facilitator, Anne Nagy, where all the participants were working professional i.e. adults and not children.

Ms Nagy jingled a pair of brass bells and told us: “It’s story time.” It served as an unconscious trigger for the adults to shed our inhibitions and assemble ourselves on the floor in a circle and eagerly wait for her to start her story. Ms Nagy told us that in her regular sessions, she uses a large African wand instead of bells to summon the workshop participants to sit in a circle. It was an old story but we remember ourselves enjoying it profoundly because of the way Ms Nagy narrated it, integrating it with songs, laughter and humour. The parents amongst us learnt tales that they could narrate to their own children and even grandchildren, the teachers learnt techniques for the students, and those like me were simply able to reconnect with the joy we used to feel as kids upon hearing a great story.

Bedtime stories

I felt lucky as a child as my father took time to read and narrate stories to me. Since at times it was an impromptu performance, hence, he would be adding the events from daily life, characters from TV series and even uncles and cousins. He used to juxtapose all these real and fictional elements to make the stories vivid and colourful. I, in turn, did the same for younger cousins and then for my own students. That’s why I feel that children who are not being read to at bedtime by their parents are missing so much.

Parents these days don’t have time to read out or narrate bedtime stories to their kids. They feel or are made to feel that their kids aren’t interested in this kind of stuff anymore because they have Internet, cable network, and video games at their disposal.

Grandparents have given up on this tradition because of the feeling that their stories’ calibre can’t possibly match the offerings of the likes of Harry Potter, Lord of the Ring etc.

Sharing the human experience

Narrating or reading stories is a quintessential way to bond; with yourself, with the narrator/writer, the audience and with those around you. Enjoying a story together creates a common experience. A properly told story evokes a warm feeling, a connection. It establishes a joyful relationship between the teller and listener(s). It draws people closer to one another, community members, adult to adults, adult to child, and child to child.

The act of narrating and/or writing down your stories ultimately helps you to make the essential connections between your thoughts and your surroundings in real life. They improve your life competency skills. Getting to know from where you have come ultimately helps you find where you want to go. Stories allow you to use your imagination and build up your communication skills in a high tech world in a way that gadgets (mobile phone, Internet, video game) don’t allow. You can get to connect with others and enrich your experience and theirs as well through story-telling.

Here are some ideas that you can utilise:

* Read or verbally share with your younger siblings and cousins the stories you have read or heard in your childhood. Encourage them to share the same as well. Hearing one of my younger cousins’ recounts of the adventures of the dog from outer space and his laser gun makes me smile and recall how I too was possessed with a quirky imagination at his age. Such stories feed the kid that lies inside all of us.

* If your parents and grandparents have given up on that as well, then try and coax them into telling you and your siblings some new tales, about themselves, their lives, ancestors, heritage, memoirs, etc. This would allow you to spend quality time with them without the typical awkwardness and frictions. Biographies are a form of personal stories, an excellent way to reconnect with your past.

* Make story-telling a class project. Ask your classmates to compile illustrated stories about themselves; especially about their families, their ancestors, their heritage, their folklores, etc. This is particularly helpful when you have moved to a different school in the same or altogether new country or city.

* Teachers can encourage students to build a story mosaic based on their real or fictional experiences. This practice of story narration would not only strengthen the different skills of the students i.e. listening, speaking and writing, it would also provide them confidence.

Modern story telling has evolved on to become more than just an oral narration of old stories and folklores. It’s an art, being expressed in unique ways. Being featured in Readers Digest, Dan Hurley is a modern story-teller with a type writer. He has found his passion in writing 60-minute novels on demand. He has been doing this for over 17 years. He started sitting on a footpath with a type writer and churning out novelettes in 60 minutes upon hearing the things that people told him. Over the years, he has written over 25,000 stories – accounts of living breathing people and passersby. He calls his stories “a rainbow, a pillar of life’s little lessons.” Today, the type writers have been replaced with PCs and laptops.

Blogs – living, breathing everyday stories

Another interesting phenomenon is the teenagers writing online diaries or blogs. These diaries too are a form of personal stories and narratives being shared with an unfathomably large number of audiences — friends and strangers alike. An interesting example of this is the story blog of a twin city-based writer called Amir Saleem. Amir’s picture blog is unique, as he spins around stories on the basis of random pictures. You can have a glimpse at the URL given below: http://www.amirsaleem.com/ phototales.html (accessible through http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/ http://www.amirsaleem.com/phototales.html)

The two examples prove that the inspiration for stories lies in events of ordinary life. So if you wonder who wants to hear the story of a frog these days that turned into a prince, then you are probably right! But then stories don’t lose their appeal, they merely need to be rejuvenated and spiced up with contemporary influences. That’s why Shakespeare’s Romeo has not traded his tights and sword for a pair of torn jeans and is still making audience gasp and clap at Broadway every day.

But it doesn’t end here….

Have you heard the story of the tortoise and the hare, and the race they underwent? Who won in the end? The tortoise of course! But this is not where the story ends; I recently heard an improvised version of this story, which goes something like: after losing the race in an unexpected manner to the tortoise, the hare realised that he’d lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there’s no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race.

The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles. But the story doesn’t end here! The tortoise did some thinking this time and realised that there’s no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was being carried out, hence, he challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route. He won this time. But the story doesn’t end here. It goes on and on, transforming into something new and magical every time it’s narrated. You can try that too.

Every story is in fact merely old wine in a new bottle. It doesn’t matter if it starts and ends with or without “Once upon a time…” or “…lived happily ever after!” It’s what lies in between that matters.

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