Story Telling- A career opportunity!

Story telling from being  a hobby has become  a career  for many.. My second daughter, one of the the founder members of Bangalore Story Telling Society is one such person who has taken to story telling with great  passion.  She tells me that Story telling is no more restricted to children with morals but is used as a  communication tool even by Corporates in their training sessions. There are professional training institutes training interested candidates in this art which used to be the prerogative of the grand parents of  yore! Alas, with the disintegration  of  joint families today`s children are denied the benefit of this important means of learning about our  mythologies, traditions and cultures.

As a boy brought up  in Mumbai, far away from our grandparents based in Chennai, my siblings and I were denied the privilege of hearing stories from them.  My father neither had  the inclination nor interest in  telling stories; my mother, who was always under tremendous pressure with domestic chores, found very little time to enlighten us on this score. She would make it up by taking us sometimes to Pravachanams of scholars who came visiting  Bombay to give discourses on Ramayanam  or Mahabharatham . The result was that I grew up with limited knowledge of our heritage.

While my lack of knowledge of heritage did not affect my building a successful career as an advertising professional, it posed a major challenge when my grand children arrived. When they would come  visiting and expected me to tell them stories, I was at a loss. When I tried to cook up stories from the epics with my limited knowledge, they would pull me up for the mistakes I was making  in narrating the stories because they  had already heard the stories from their paternal grandparents. It became very embarrassing. I found a solution. I bought several story books for children. Whenever they demanded stories from me I started reading out from the story books. It was a sheer  joy to be nestled with them in beds and reading stories. They were happy and I was happy that  I managed to retain my reputation as a story teller.

Undoubtedly story telling is one of the best ways to teach children values of life.It is an art which  requires  a  good memory on the part of the story teller.  Newspapers are full of horror stories about cri me against women, not sparing even the toddlers and young children. We cannot stop these by enacting laws. I believe that this menace can be tackled only through education. Boys must be taught to respect girls/women from childhood.. Teaching them life lessons through stories is one effective way, like it is happening in Japan. I understand  that in Japan, for the first  few  years  school children are taught  Japanese traditions and culture through activities including story sessions.

Closer home I was delighted to learn about an 86 years old grandma spinning stories for a few hours daily to students of Bala Mandir, a school for underprivileged children,. She has been doing this for the last three decades as a volunteer. We need many more such volunteers among the senior citizens who can not only bring joy and hope into the lives of kids but also spend their time usefully.

It will be also a good idea for every school to have a couple of special story telling classes every week  for creating a whole new generation of youngsters with right values of life.