Sreelakshmi Nair remembers a time when her grandmother would narrate tales from The Ramayana. Grandma would doze off halfway through the story but Sreelakshmi, keen on hearing the rest, would shake her awake again. As Sreelakshmi modulates her voice to narrate the incident, it becomes clear why storytelling comes naturally to this primary school teacher.
“Children are not living in joint families any more and with both parents working, they might not always have the time,” says Sreelakshmi, founder of Vidyamritam, a non-profit organisation that provides skill-based learning for children from underprivileged backgrounds. Like those parents who have a bedtime ritual of storytelling with their children, Sreelekshmi too used to indulge her daughter, Nayomi, from the time she was a baby. Now, Sreelakshmi tells stories for her students in school. The tiny tots wait for her story hour on Fridays.
She is among a growing group of storytellers in the city who are reviving the tradition of oral narratives. They say that for all the entertainment offered on television, oral narration comes with advantages that are hard to overlook. Archana Gopinath, Prashanth Gangadharan, Anjali Manoj, Maria Mathews, Seema Richard and Anjali Rajan Dileep are some of the raconteurs in the city mesmerising children with their stories.
When Archana returned to the city after a decade of working in the construction industry and founded The Reading Room, she was merely following her heart. Combining her love for children and books, she began storytelling sessions that catered to various age groups. The validation, in the form of parental feedback, sometimes leaves the civil engineer deeply moved.
Prashanth Gangadharan
It is a feeling every storyteller identifies with. After Prashanth had his ‘Aha’ moment – “that children like listening to me”, the former engineer and marketing executive began to look for more venues where he could share his love for storytelling while he was based in Bengaluru. Exposure to Waldorf Education that emphasised the importance of imagination in learning confirmed to Prashanth that his strength could make a difference. He too returned to the city to start Learning Alternatives in 2016.
“I have seen children wonder if there is a catch when they are handed a book and simply asked to read for the joy of it. They are so used to being tested and awarded marks. Instead of helping children discover who they are, I see that the mindset of parents in this city is competitive, just like in my school days. Storytelling initiatives are gaining momentum, which is proof that this glaring gap is being filled.” Prashanth’s older son Sacheth, now 11, who has a borderline learning disability, prompted the thought for inclusive sessions at the centre.
Sreelakshmi Nair
Seema, software engineer and founder of Schoolkutti, a children’s library, hosts storytellers on Saturdays at her library, when she isn’t conducting sessions herself.
Maria Mathews is one such storyteller who founded The Bee’s Tales in Vattiyoorkavu two months ago. Also known as ‘B’, short for Bina, her nickname among family and friends, hence The Bee, she is also hoping to keep an age-old tradition alive with some of her own techniques. After returning from London last October, where she used to hold sessions with pre-school children, Bina felt a vacuum in the city for such activities. “There are lots of public activity spaces in London where children are taken for storytelling sessions. Here, young children have no way to make friends except through kindergarten and mums have little interaction unless they are working. So I thought why not tell more children the same stories that I tell my son, Amrit. He too had little to do once we moved here apart from read as he doesn’t watch TV.”
Maria Mathews
Story time at Bina’s centre is a bonding ritual of sorts. With no more than five children and their guardians accommodated per session, the hour begins with a snack. “Then we sit in a circle and tell our names which immediately makes us friends.” When the story session begins the ice is broken and by craft time, everyone is sharing crayons and patiently waiting for their new found buddies to finish colouring. Playtime wraps up the session and everyone goes home smiling.
Bina likes to incorporate craft that is related to the story. At a previous session, the children thought they’d heard everything there was to know about teeth – till Bina pulled out a pair of dentures from a bag. “They were so excited! One of the parents was a dentist. She showed the kids how to brush their teeth correctly which had every one hooked. These are what they will remember and discuss once back home.”
Storytelling is no cakewalk as these self-taught experts prove. “We take our storytelling very seriously,” Prashanth says, preferring to read a book beforehand and narrating the story for his young audience. “It helps maintain eye contact and the narration becomes a performance in itself. Attention spans are lower these days and if you don’t let them in on the crux of a story soon enough, they switch off and make sure you know that they are bored.”
Anjali Rajan Dileep
Anjali, founder of Apple Story Club, juggles her job as programme head with Club FM and her passion for story telling. “This is all part of a movement towards inculcating a reading habit among children. Many parents are now making it a point to keep their children away from electronic gadgets and are encouraging them to read books,” she says.
Anjali has been holding story-telling sessions in schools, reading groups and for teachers of various schools. Story-telling sessions have become integral to education as that is the best way to bring children closer to books. “There are government schools where they have libraries in each classroom. Some of them have reading rooms for mothers who also tell stories for the children,” she adds.
Sreelakshmi says, “Parents want to know if every activity will improve the child’s English, make them read and write more and help get more marks. When they keep listening, which is the basis for writing, that skill naturally improves. Writing goes down these days because they are not reading enough. Storytelling takes care of everything.”
Archana’s sessions encourage a lot of reflection by the children which is followed by healthy debates.
“Children love being treated as individuals. When 10 children come up with that many perspectives, it teaches them how the same thing can be looked at differently and that it is okay,” she observes. At the end of a long day of teaching, Sreelakshmi says she finds storytelling invigorating. “I feel like I have conquered the world.”
