Can you tell me who is the most fascinating storyteller of all times – it is our grandmother. How wonderful those old days were.
Just go back few decades and remember – most of us have travelled hundreds of kilometres to meet our grandmothers and spend summer holidays. The travel preparation used to start much before the exams were over.
During those days, the jargon ‘wardrobe’ did not exist. All we had was 1-2 steel almirahs that could accommodate clothes of most of the family members. The flights were very limited and expensive, and so, trains and buses were the preferred mode of conveyance. Getting confirmed train tickets were like celebrations – and much easier than today.
Like a normal child, I too used to be over-excited to meet my grandmother, who was quite old and lived in Pune with my uncle, who was in the Indian army.
My grandmother was an excellent storyteller too and perhaps I owe my storytelling skills to my grandmother. She knew that I would be coming and would ask her to narrate a new story each day, for as many days I stayed with her.
She was not literate and so her stories were instant. She would start telling the story of a cat and then the cat would turn into a lion. And later the lion would become a human and a man-eater. Everything was so fascinating that the mind never went into finding logics in the stories.
I also did not insist on any scientific or biological or historical explanation to prove her point. For me, it was important to travel into the world of my grandmother’s fascination and experience her visualization, which was spontaneous and beyond boundaries.
I remember, she spoke about a fairy who would come from the moon and narrate a story every day to me. She convinced me also that this fairy travelled from moon, only to meet me, and the fairy knew that I was coming to spend holidays with my grandmother. My grandmother had kept the name also of the fairy as “Chanda Pari” (Moon Fairy) – since she came from moon every night.
My grandmother would imitate the attire and voice of this fairy and would speak in different voice-tones. She would also give background noises when “Chanda Pari” would fly, with her vast wings that travelled faster than an aeroplane. She would also narrate how “Chanda Pari” would cross clouds and her conversation with clouds. In her story, the dark clouds stopped “Chanda Pari” every time she crossed them and the white clouds were cooperative and supportive.
Her voice modulations were excellent, but sometime, when she narrated stories of animals and imitated their voices, her throat would demand for warm water. I would rush to the kitchen to get some warm water – Yes, I was selfish. It was important for my grandmother to have perfect voice to narrate the stories – so hot water was prepared every night, before she started the narration.
Is it not amazing that most of the stories narrated to the children were inspired from the fairy tales of someone’s grandmother? Take any example, whether movie or serials or comics, the script is similar to some bed-time stories of someone’s grandmother.
Don’t tell me this now – Grandmothers are grandmothers, they are not limited to India only.
Issues used to come when my grandmother used to become ill – the age factor. That time my grandfather used to take the charge of becoming a storyteller. But his stories had many interruptions and were very dry. His knowledge was limited to logics and practicalities. His lions always had four legs. His fairy was a little different and travelled from a nearby village. His monkeys always climbed trees and never travelled on clouds. His fishes never ate ‘halwa’. And moreover, the fairies never fought with demons.
Further, his fairies were more of a male than females, and would often work in agriculture field.
His story narration was more like writing a letter to the sarpanch of the village. How could I enjoy?
The difference was evident – when my grandmother told me the stories, I never felt like sleeping. She had to say, ‘now sleep down’. And when my grandfather narrated a story – No efforts were made to remain awake. I could sleep instantly, particularly when the fairy used to get fertilizers for a good yield.
Both my grandmother and grandfather are sharing their stories to the almighty now. The stories they narrated always ended in good-tone, with a positivity. There was a hope and a belief that things might look different today, but tomorrow, things will change for better.
Perhaps at that age, all we needed to understand was the positive ending. Today, we only fear the end – the outcome. We expect more of unexpected.
When you are struggling in life and when you think the life is being unfair to you, just go back to your memories and enjoy what all you had and still have, as memories. Remember, those old stories that had limitless imagination.
One day, only these memories would remain. One day you would be narrating such stories yourself – some would be cooked too.
With time, your priorities would change. Your thought process would change. You will change.
That day, you will also become a “Storyteller like me”.