Story Telling

There was a sparrow; it used to live in a small nest with …That is how a story unfolds.  Children listen to the narration with wide-open eyes and open mouth, half-eaten biscuits in their hands. Any slight sound would interrupt that absorbing moment.

Narrate your stories to children and enrich their little minds. Narration is also an art. Words enliven the characters and take children into a fantasy world filled with the rainbow colors. Children wander in that fantasy world with birds, flowers and animals. Past, present and future all open their wings at time in this world. These small wonderful trips into the fantasy world help them to build their own creative and imaginative universe. Why do we tell stories to children? Are we educating them morally through the story telling? Are we introducing them to creativity? So many questions arise one after another. We start telling stories to them at tender age. In the beginning, the stories start with the moon and stars and the characters of birds and animals. The physical features and the characters of birds, animals and objects are highlighted in the context of stories. These characters have moral responsibility towards children. Through these stories,we make an effort to discipline our children in the hope that they will be able to differentiate between good and bad. This very skill of differentiating and choosing  right things for them would help them to lead a happy life, in future. Usually, grandparents or the elders at home tell stories to their children, before taking them to bed. The story is half way and the children fall asleep. Next morning, they demand for the next half of the story. This story session is the backbone of their relationship. Now the nuclear families are in existence and there is no space for the story session as both parents are having jobs and lead a hectic life. Because of so many reasons, the joint family structure is vanishing rapidly, where grandparents and grandchildren stay together and enjoy the story secessions. Now in the school curriculum, moral science as a subject is included. Earlier this moral science subject was taught through the story telling by the elders at home. Through the storytelling, children are disciplined and a moral responsibility is inculcated in them towards family and society.We have a strong tradition of storytelling in India. The Panchtantra stories are quite famous in this direction. In Panchatantra Stories, we come across the stories of animals and the structure of the forest and the power play among  animals. Each animal’s character is brought out vividly and explains about the relationships among animals. These stories enlighten children on moral and political issues. There is an assumption that Vishnu Sharma wrote the Panchatantra stories in the 3rd century, in Sanskrit language. By the 11^th century, those stories were translated to other languages and became popular worldwide. Still these stories are prevalent and apt to the contemporary situation.

 A rich visual unfolds...  Here comes our big foolish cat Tom, holding a fish in its hand and mouth watering. Our small intelligent Jerry watches Tom from the corner of the room and plans to steal that fish…the cartoon continues .. Visuals explode.. visual culture intoxicates….

 In the present context, children are lured by T.V. They watch either animations or cartoons to recreate themselves. Sometimes they will indulge in video games.The T.V. watching is on rise more among the children because of the unending rich visuals. Today, we are leaning more and more towards visual culture. T.V. computers, laptops, tablets and mobiles offer rich, detailed visuals of different cultures, from the different corners of the world. A visual is stronger than a verbal or written word and impacts easily. No doubt, we are under the impression that this new technology offers us better knowledge of the world, but these visuals damage our talent for imagination, which is essential for creativity. Children keep watching the cartoons without a blink, they enjoy the story line but they will not divulge the moral of the story on their own. Someone elder has to pinpoint the hidden morals in the stories and explain about its importance to the child and its application to life. The Story telling is slowly vanishing because of the nuclear family pattern and the influence of T.V. In the story telling sessions, relationships are built with the elders in the family. These relationships are very important in one’s life. These relationships make our life happy and meaningful. Along with these relationships, children will inculcate compassion, tolerance, understanding, sharing, and sacrifice and so on. These relationships help one to build social life and social activities, After all, we are all social beings, alienating ourselves from these social activities is against our nature. We need to think on this line.  Here the story continues…. Man being adventurous and selfish, he started cutting the trees in the forest, the forest started vanishing… that vexed the king of the forest. The lion, king of the forest, summoned all the animals to discuss the matter. The animals thought of a plan to avenge men. As per their plan, the magician jackal came with its wands to the town and uttered some magic words and instantly all the vehicles, two-wheeler and four-wheeler, started following the jackal. The jackal dancing with a line of vehicles behind it vanished into the forest like Pied Piper… with the vanishing of the vehicles,  the life in the town came to standstill .. The story continues…