Why the world needs its storytellers

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Jack and the Beanstalk was the first story that I recall from my childhood and how my mother had beautifully conjured it up as a fantastical world to a wide-eyed four-year-old. It had vivid imagery that she had painted in technicolour, and had packed in every element of storytelling, complete with dialogues, descriptive forms and shapes and even voice modulations for different characters. Who needed the storybook, when you had an engaging storyteller at home? So much so that when I got my hands on a classic collection that included this story, my mother's narration won hands down over this glossy pictorial version. I remember that storyboard till today. There were many other stories that were etched in the mind. Since I was a fussy eater, stories were used as a means to distract me during mealtimes. And while Aesop's Fables, Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle and Target, Asterix and Tintin came in later, my initiation into the world of stories was all thanks to those delightful narrations. Even later, realising that I had an ever-willing storyteller at home, I took full advantage of the convenience and indulged her all the time. As a voracious reader, she had built a massive library at home, and I would pick her brains each time I noticed that she had devoured a good book from the shelf; all I had to do was prod her to reveal the ‘story'. So, by the time I was in my early teens, she, after carefully curating its content to make it ‘age-appropriate', would narrate stories one by one. This would range from horror bestsellers like The Omen, wartime titles by Leon Uris, English classics like Jane Eyre and Little Women, and sometimes, even controversial reads like The Thorn Birds. These sessions were usually reserved for Sundays, during or after lunchtime. Sometimes, it would be at teatime. Those moments were priceless, and with hindsight moulded and opened the mind up to all kinds of genres and the outside world in pre-satellite television days. It also introduced me to the craft of writing a good story.

In high school, I was lucky to have an English teacher who introduced us to diverse authors and also took our impressionable minds into far-flung universes; those of us who appreciated this necessary deviation from the syllabus soaked it all in. Often, school periods would spill over into the next, and would require some amount of diplomacy and convincing for the next teacher to sacrifice her slot, so that we could enjoy an uninterrupted 90-minute storytelling session that would put Jules Verne's globetrotting classic to shame.

Later, in college, the list of awesome storytellers continued to show up - from an English professor who gave us grand tours of her summer holidays, including visits to Elvis Presley's home in Graceland, to an Economics lecturer who made us relate to sometimes boring topics by introducing a cool quirk or a fun quiz about a nutty economist, warming us into the real deal. And to think that these lectures were held at 7.30 am! As film club members, the professor-in-charge converted sessions into storytelling addas. Another professor held a bi-weekly communications skills class where she would turn it into a debating club; if there was an issue to discuss - political, sexual, trivial - the floor was all ours. Forty-five minutes was never enough for those engaging experiences, where storytelling and opinions organically came together.

After those enriching encounters in our formative years, when I come across mentions these days of storytelling events that we list in The Guide, it takes the mind back to those wonder years. Have we actually reached a time and place where simple things like telling a story requires an expert and an entry ticket? Do we need a fixed time and a space to listen to a story? I guess that stage has well and truly arrived; at least going by the number of such events that I spot on listicle aggregators. Don't get me wrong - I have the highest regard for this band of storytellers who are doing great service by engaging with a distracted and impatient audience across age groups, drawing them into stories across every conceivable topic.

Parents don't seem to have the time to share this unique growing-up experience with their kids; they leave it to books or tablets to fill in the gap; school teachers, meanwhile, are busy playing catch-up to the white-collared digital tutor; storytelling in its purest form can wait. Another outlet for storytelling is the open mic format; it's the cool way to share and to listen to byte-sized stories. And that's not such a bad thing after all.

The tactile objective of telling a story in person might have changed its template in our hurried urban existence but let's not lose sight of its relevance, of the power of a good story. To allow this process to survive is critical for this generation and the next.

I'd like to leave you, dear readers, with these words by a Nigerian essayist that I've recently discovered - Chinweizu Ibekwe. He writes: What kind of people we become depends crucially on the stories we are nurtured on.'

mid-day's Features Editor Fiona Fernandez relishes the city's sights, sounds, smells and stones...wherever the ink and the inclination takes her. She tweets @bombayana

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