Between “Once upon a time” and “the end!”
Recently I was asked the question- What do you think is a ‘story’ and why do children love stories? That got me thinking about the fascinating world of ‘stories’. A world free of any laws, rules, restrictions, do’s and don’ts. A world where everyone has a voice, and everything has a tale to tell!
Stories have always been an integral part of human history. The way of interaction and communication. They have been a medium to make sense of the world. They have been around from the time humans have walked the Earth. In many shapes, forms, mediums, styles- they remain that common thread between people, cutting across borders and divide, both imaginary and manmade.
Evidence have shown that humans have always had a long history of oral story telling. Oral stories are a repertoire of oral history of people. They hold a wealth of knowledge of experiences spanning, life worlds, ailments and cure, cultivation and child rearing, communities and ways to care. Ancient civilizations and indigenous communities of today from around the world still rely on oral history. They have been shared as myths, legends, religious practices and social belief.
The earliest enduring concrete evidence of storytelling can be found in the cave paintings of ancient civilizations, like the Lascaux cave in France, dating back over 17,000 years.
However, today’s story is not about the history of stories. It a story about how stories became our voices to tell our own story.
Near our college, there used to be a small ‘restaurant’. More of a ‘shack’ by today’s terminology. It very much had a restaurant vibe for us back then. We used to go there for chicken rolls., which we would have standing outside on the hot busy pavement. Sometimes when the hostel bell and our pockets would permit, sit inside for plates of steaming momo and bowls of thukpa! That place birthed many stories of love and heart break, of how to evade our hostel matron and make that ‘not allowed’ phone call (there were no mobile phones). Our hostel matron would sit right in front of the telephone, the only landline connection, and stare into our faces as we had our nervous conversations with whoever was on the other side!
Now, almost 30 years later, whenever our college friends meet, we still reminiscence about those days, telling the stories repeatedly! Laughing, reliving and filling gaps in the narratives. Every time we seem to remember a new detail!
They are not mere stories, they are memories, shaping who we are, telling us who we were.
Each of us hold such innumerable bittersweet memories within ourselves, some shared, some buried within ourselves, never to be revealed.
Stories are a part of us or are we a part of stories?
I would think the former. Our identity is one of many such stories. Some incidents remembered as they were, for some, the lines between reality and imagination has become a little blurred
perhaps. We remember some as we would want them to be remembered, holding onto snatches of conversations, proximity, love and longing that were ephemeral and elusive.
I often imagine stories for myself. A future where “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”. Where I have the freedom to choose. My choices ranging from my glass of wine to whom I can love. Stories give us a sense of power. An agency which is perhaps not so easily acquired. It enables us to imagine an alternative world. Where we have the freedom to think. A space to be set free, an escape. An escape from whatever has been imposed upon.
Through stories we get to imagine adventures, love, exhilaration, societies, roles that life denies. They reflect the reader, and they shape the reader as well. Reading reviews of any popular book would reveal the spectrum of interpretation they elicit. It reveals the reader. It lays bare the ideology, the belief system, the social understanding, the political belief, the ethos and values of the reader. They are a revelation of the individual character and through them the social character of a particular time frame the reader might belong to. We have heard, “A man is known by the company he keeps”. The company of the stories one remembers, tells, listens to or reads and watches, could be counted as well!
“We are the only creature that does this unusual thing of telling stories to each other to understand the kind of creature we are” Salman Rushdie (Masterclass on Storytelling and Writing)
Walking into a classroom full of children, nothing works like magic as stories. Recently reading ‘Diwaswapan’ by Gijubhai Badheka, with a group of friends, reiterated this conviction on story telling in classrooms. The imagination with which a child can transcend a banal act like ‘walking to school’ perhaps is a clear indicator to their scale of creativity. Any conversation with teachers working with children will bear testimony to the innumerable incidents when a simple conversation or remark has blossomed to extraordinary narrations, views, creativity, interactions and ideas. They unfold into stories into no time. Every child holds a story within themselves, some possible and many not so possible, but nothing ‘impossible’! There is no room for ‘impossibility’ in their world view! Everything can have a story, everyone can have a voice, every being can experience emotions, and every conflict can be resolved! Stories are the key to explore this wonderous world between reality and make belief! The benefit of stories in the children’s life is manifold and multifaceted. It requires a major discussion.
Stories and storytelling are an intimate part of our lives. Right from birth to death, we are but anthology of tales. Some we write ourselves and some are written by others. Some are narrated by us, and some are retold by others. Some stories get an audience and some does not. Amidst the pages of our life’s book, we look for solace, kindness, love, dreams, desires, wants and drama. We seek fulfilment of our lives through the imaginations of others, the writers and the story tellers. The carefree imagination with which children weave their stories gets eroded as we age. We become too ‘real’ perhaps, and hence our stories become stories of others. Imagined, written and told by many voices but our own.
Through the characters they weave, writers and storyteller give us that courage to write our own life stories. Without them, the courage would be lost. We need our stories and our story tellers.
It is perhaps also the time to reclaim back our stories and tell them our way!
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