All of us have unwritten stories within us. Dormant within the recesses of the grey cells in the memory area of our brains, they may never be acknowledged; let alone remembered or narrated. Digging into those neurons relives so many moments that my conscious mind had long forgotten and then something writes itself out!
As a child, I had discovered that there are but a few adults who volunteer to tell stories; but coax anyone, and they would try for a child’s sake. And let themselves go! Telling a story to a child probably removed conscious inhibitions and brought out the childishness in them! Thus I discovered that the reluctant ones were the best weavers. They made up so much. Their unbelievable, shocking and amusing anecdotes added colorful wings to my imagination and flew me in a world of delightful make believe! One such tale spinner was my aunt who was in her late teens and full of romantic ideas.
“Tell me a story,” I would ask; both of us sprawled on the floor, beneath the fan, beating the heat of summer holidays and she would set off on a romantic journey. Wove Hindi Films in desi flavor! Most times about a rich boy falling in love with his sister’s friend! Years later I realized that it could have been her story (for she was beautiful)… but by then my imagination had added so many dimensions to that single thread that the theme languishes within me even today with half a dozen unwritten stories!
And of the few adults who volunteered to narrate stories were my mother’s cousins. In fact my first memories of listening to stories is as a three year old, straddled at their waists, being told about the sad story of Punyakoti (Punyakoti was a cow, who for the sake of keeping her word, abandoned her calf and volunteered to be food for a cruel tiger) These cruel people would linger on the scene when the cow is parting from its calf and sometimes even start the story from there! And sure enough, each time, unfailingly, I would burst into tears; begging them to stop or get to the scene where the tiger dies of shame and the mother-son are united! It amused them a great deal that a story told so un-artistically could evoke such strong emotion in a child each time! However, that was the only story they could ever tell and thankfully, I grew out of them!
In my quest for stories, I hitched on to another aunt who was very religious and a repertoire of all Gods’ stories and so much of mythology too. Every once in two to three weeks, she would come over and stay for a day or two. After she had finished discussing and dissecting all the worldly matters with my mother, she would turn her attention to me. That was my cue to ask for a story. In return for a story, she had a disciplining-plan up her sleeve…and of course,the same plan always! As we fussed a lot over food, she would try to ease it for my mother by taking over the feeding sessions during her stay.
“If you do not eat well and in good time, I will stop the stories.” She would wag her finger. And then, she would sit on the threshold between kitchen and dining rooms, belting out episode after episode of Lord Krishna’s childhood stories, herself lost in devotion! And we sat all ears, with mouths agape, half eaten food before us and our fingers long gone dry!! A shout from mommy enquiring if we had finished eating got us all(my sister, my aunt and me) into correct perspectives! We would set about gobbling mouthfuls and she would come out of her trance! The scene then got shifted to the sleeping area. She began fresh episodes. I never let her doze off without completing the current story. For I could not sleep with half the story churning in the mind. So she would complete it and by the end, being caught in devotional frenzy, would begin the next one. So it went like the Arabian Nights…I would not let her stop in the middle of one and she could not contain starting another. And when it was past eleven, my dad would cough and remind us that it was really late, cueing her to stop. I would beg her to switch to whispering, which she would never oblige, of course! I liked her stories best when she dished out some rare ones or brought in a new character that few people knew about. These were obviously from the Puranas. (Religious Hindu texts) Her narration though had a heavy devotional slant with very little embellishments of elements of surprise or suspense…
When it came to such elements of narration, my mother beat them all story-tellers! Her stories materialized from nothing and nowhere, and were snatches of insanely hilarious episodes which had no beginning and certainly no endings! It was a free for all, complete-the-story-however-you-want types. With tears streaming down and stitches in our sides, we would roll ourselves off to a good afternoon’s siesta. On somber days, she made vivid narrations out of bland newspaper stories. Kidnapped children with eyes gouged out on streets of Bombay , how a guest shot the poor server at point blank range for refusing to serve pooris (also in Bombay) and the dreaded gang armed with chloroform knocking out and robbing people...she gave faces, voices and emotions to villains and devised motives to most crimes and had us pitying the underdogs the entire week!
My dad was less animated. For the lighter vein, he resorted to stories of Tenali Ramakrishna (Court jester to King Krishna Devaraya) which were his personal favorites. Most of his other stories were hero-centric and serious. He told us about Ashoka, Harshavardhana, Buddha and interesting anecdotes of Einstein, Ramanujam, Sir.M.Vishveshwaraiah... Brimming with enthusiasm I would look out of the window at the winking stars wondering what perhaps lay before me waiting to be explored and crown me with the Nobel Prize! Such was the impact of any story on me…it would take me to the highest possible highs! My father, like his father, had a limited collection of stories. But his other knack of consistency makes him a quite a passable story teller with children even today! For he can tell each of his stories, with exactly the same words, same intonation, same pause for generations to come! What my children hear now was exactly what I had heard as a child…no additions or deletions or change of emotions!! I have not just got his stories but also his punch lines, puns and morals by rote!!
Needless to say, I grew out of all the story-tellers around me and their stories by the time I was eight! Thankfully for my insatiable hunger for stories, I had learnt to latch on to books.
My dad gave me his unused library card one summer morning vaguely indicating I could borrow books from The City Central Library (CCL). An hour later, I was on my way to the Library which was in Malleshwaram (a good 2-3 kilometers walk in summer sun from home). ‘Of Gods and Demons’ was my first book and I completing it in two days, I was back at the dinghy CCL. One book old, I knew I would never have to beg any and everyone to tell me a story from then on!
Greater literary delight awaited me in the library the next time. Catching me desperately pulling out books from all shelves, the librarian came to me and said, “I suggest you check out the children’s section. They would have books for you there!”
“Oh! IS there such a section?” I couldn’t believe my good luck.” And could I borrow books from there with this card?” I held up the yellow card. “Yes. Now talk softly and be gone!” he had smiled.
It was another dint of luck that the CCL was a walking distance from my school. We had now shifted home necessitating travel by bus. The only bus would drop us off near school by 10.30 in the morning and our classes began only at 12 noon. For one and a half hour, everyday, for the next few years, the children’s section at the library told me all the stories that I was longing to hear! The Lady Bird series, all of Enid Blyton’s and Fairy Tales series from all over the world were mopped in, before graduating on to Carolyn Keene and Franklin Dixon. The librarians knew me well and at 11.45, they would tell me it was time to go to school. Bookmarking the page, I would leave reluctantly, not before hiding the book someplace where only I could find it the next day! If the librarian was the friendly man instead of the severe lady, I even had the nerve to request him to keep the book separately so that I could come back tomorrow and pick up from where I left!
But the government did not think much of updating and replenishing the children section and by the end of three years I had read all the books twice over and shifted scene to the adult section below, which also had not many books to cater to my interests. I suppose that for fear of pilferage, the library had very limited supply of Amar Chitra Kathas.( Delightfully illustrated Comic books of most Indian idols and legends)I made up by borrowing these from my friend. Her father had made bound volumes of ten books each and she had a collection of over seven volumes. But I had to sit in her house during the play hours in the evening and read the comics. Occasionally I begged her to part with one volume for one night and she would oblige too!
With increasing academic load and a now-not-so-exciting-CCL, my reading got cut down. There were several instances of being with a Nancy Drew or some other book within my Social Studies book and it created such a hue and cry that I had to cut down and suppress my urge for new stories.
But school and English teachers were a valid excuse to read stories and the English teacher of course was my favourite in school. She had to tell us the stories before we got to the question –answers or fill up the blanks or match the following exercises. Most teachers did just that. Went by books and told stories, not narrated. But not Mrs. Nancy Varghese, who taught us English in the fifth standard. In one blessed class, she introduced a new person called William Shakespeare and I can never thank her enough for it. Discussing Shakespeare was not in curriculum, yet she went ahead! Once in a few weeks, she would narrate a part of one drama. “Antonio”, “Bessanio”, “Portia”, “Shylock” she would write while narrating and kept circling the names each time she referred to them during story telling! She managed ‘Merchant of Venice’, ‘Mid-Summer Night’s Dream’ and a little of “Julius Caesar’ by the time we finished class five.
That was when I happened to lay my hands on a copy of Complete Works of Shakespeare that sat untouched in the bookshelf at home. A friend had presented it to dad and now it was mine! (It got so worn out that I had to buy a new one a few years ago!)Now they could not say don’t read story books. I had a ready answer that kept them quiet! -“The teacher taught us this in school!”
Apart from the literary delight, Shakespeare’s knack lies in filling that awning gap of a live narrator in story telling! True that resorting to books did away with dependence on someone to tell a story and I could fill in my own gestures, emotions, interpretations…yet, a story has a different flavor when you sit and listen and watch the story teller than when you pore over the books and imagine what it would be like!!
I discovered Shakespeare did make up for this shortcoming, probably because he narrated stories as dramas. And with his vast treasure of works and with the teacher discussing him at school, I had a guilt-free, parents-approved reading of stories at home!
But there is one other person who greatly influenced my obsession with storytelling and that was the Harikathe Dasaru!
The Harikathe Dasaru is a performing story teller. The stories narrated are called Harikathe (God’s or Divine Anecdotes- a very loose translation) The Harikathe Dasaru is a solo performer and almost always a man. A popular story from the Hindu mythology is chosen and adapted by the Harikathe Dasa who presents it to an audience with animated dialogues interspersed with songs! The venue is a temple premises and most often the Harikathe programmes are held during certain important days like the festivals and Full moons and some special Saturdays.
If you heard and watched a Harikathe even once in your life, it would haunt you for the rest of it! Harikathe encompasses all the creativity and craft involved in storytelling and it is indeed sad that this art form has almost disappeared today!
My house was immediate neighbor to a small Krishna Temple in that street and little surprise that my tryst with Harikathe and Harikathe Dasaru began when I was less than five years old. Even as I mention Harikathe, my memory cells are happily at work, flashing the past….the garlanded Harikathe Dasa, his harmonium and the filled temple hall…the stories, his ‘taala’ and the mesmerized audience…. they all beg for a separate write up!....Story tellers-Part 2 !!!
