Would any kid trade birthday party fun games and cake cutting for a story? Apparently when Preethi Shanker Jayanth ‘storybombs’ the place, it happens! In Kochi, where she resides now with her in-laws, friends keep a check on her movements. Any common function they find her attending, they happily bring their kids along!
When Preethi takes to story telling, it acquires a new flight of its own, says her Madurai-based cousin who brought the storyteller to The Temple Town for the first time for a session with kids during Christmas. And indeed she turned out to be quite an entertainer going by the response of the young participants. From four-to-14-year-olds, they all listened to her for two hours with their mouths agape.
“Even adults get hooked to my stories,” laughs Preethi, “but I love telling them to children the most. It is like a therapy for me.” She has been doing this on-and-off for the last two years but of late her “Once Upon A Time With Preethi” sessions have been much in demand.
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“I inject life into the story, drop my voice, speak in a sing-song tone, change the accent, twirl my hair, curl my lips, raise my brows, blink my eyes…act out every single character, while also using lots of props and puppets, cut-outs and stickers, costumes and accessories,” says the 32-year-old storyteller in an equally animated conversation.
Preethi says she often asks the kids why they enjoy listening to her and they say because they find her sessions “funny”. But then the success of her story telling is not just because of the comedy she inserts but the way her strong narratives usher the children into an imagination-rich world.
Preethi’s repository includes the collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and two volumes of children’s stories brought out by Reader’s Digest years ago besides the whole lot of well-known fairy tales, folk tales and moral stories for children. “Twelve big trunks of books was the dowry I came with to Kochi from Salem and they are my most treasured possession,” she says.
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Preethi loves to give a spin to the popular stories in order to engage the children productively. “When children are able to contribute to a story and feel like a part of it, it means so much more to them than we adults can comprehend,” she asserts.
Enid Blyton, J.K Rowling, P.G.Wodehouse and Ruskin Bond remain her favourite children’s authors but there are days when Preethi can’t think of a story idea and takes the children’s help to come up with one by just asking a question, which could be as simple as which is the hottest place they visited. “Each one will give a different answer and tell his or her story attached to the place and together we weave and build it into one nice interesting story,” she smiles.
Preethi makes up her own stories, many times spontaneously depending on the mood of the participants. She also twists and tweaks popular story lines to spur the vivid imagination of the children because she believes when children actively interact, they remember it life long and also get initiated into reading. “I have had many parents say to me that my child didn’t read before and now he/she really likes reading,” says Preethi as a measure of her success.
She feels children remain the best story tellers once their imagination is kindled. “I am only an instrument in taking the stories to them, grabbing their attention and making them think.”
Preethi never writes a script or prepares a story beforehand. They come naturally and endlessly to her, she says, mostly taken from childhood memories of the stories she heard and read. However, she owes her interest to her Grade IV teacher in the Boarding School who had a fascinating way of telling stories. “We were not allowed to watch television and all my free time was spent with her listening to her stories,” recalls Preethi, who later did a Diploma course in story telling with Geeta Ramanujam in Kathalaya, Bengaluru, to become a certified story teller.
“I unravelled a box of ideas and learnt how to tell stories more effectively,” says the mother of a two-year-old boy. “I am permanently on a learning spree about how to captivate young audiences,” she says. In Kochi Preethi does private story telling sessions besides conducting weekend workshops for children categorised into two groups (four to nine years and 10 to 15 years) where they are encouraged to participate in arts, crafts and creative writing fun exercises spiced up with lots of games, cheer and laughter.
“Story telling is like an investment in your child’s development and happiness,” says Preethi and dreams of expanding her reach.