Renewed tellings

I am privileged to share here the work of one of my Story workshop participants,
Parvez Daruwala, who works as a trainer and facilitator with corporates and other groups. Parvez had done insightful work on a childhood favorite story, that he discovered, to his surprise, had unconsciously shaped so much of his response to people and events in his life, even today -- as indeed many of us exploring favorite childhood tales often find out! Parvez generously agreed to share his work with us here.

The Elephant and the Tailor
(Regular Version I heard and loved as a child)

An elephant and his mahout in a village would go from place to place seeking alms etc. People would give money or eatables. Once, a tailor, instead of giving something, pricked the elephant’s trunk with a needle. He did this the next day too. The third day the elephant arrives and again the tailor hurts him, so the elephant fills his trunk with dirty water and pours this on the garments which the tailor was stitching for the King’s daughter. The King punishes the tailor for his carelessness, and also for his cruelty to the elephant.
Moral that I picked up: Tit for Tat


The Elephant and the Tailor –
(Revised Version after the “Storywork and Healing” Session)

by Parvez J Daruwala

Once, in a small town, a Mahout used to take his elephant from door to door to seek alms. People loved the elephant and respected the Mahout who was kind and respectful to all. They would thus give eatables to the elephant like fruits which the elephant would sometimes eat and sometimes share with his keeper. When people would give money, he’d give it to his Mahout

Life was peaceful and they did not worry about the next day or next meal. They lived from day to day, trusting that their daily needs would be provided for by the village people.

One day, when the elephant, whom we will call Ramu, approached the town’s tailor, the tailor being in a foul mood, pricked a needle in Ramu’s trunk. The Gentle yet Mighty Creature was stunned with the pain and more so shocked at the violent act of the tailor. Ramu and the Mahout left silently. The second day too, the tailor pricked the needle to his trunk and Ramu and the Mahout withdrew, sadly.

Now Ramu was puzzled by this behavior of the tailor. He thought and pondered, he shed some tears and he sighed some more and he put himself in the tailor’s place and imagined why the tailor was angry. An idea came to him, He smiled, and it’s wonderful to see a smile on an elephant. He glowed with an Inner Light and on the third day when they were reaching the tailor’s shop, his Mahout urged him to walk away and not stop there. But Ramu went up to the tailor’s shop and as the tailor approached with a frown and the needle, Ramu presented him with a bunch of beautiful flowers. The surprised tailor forgot to prick him with the needle as he stretched his hand to take the flowers!

And then the next day, Ramu gave the tailor a ripe mango he had plucked from a wayside tree and the day after that, it was a shining stone and so on. The tailor was touched with Ramu’s forgiveness, acceptance and love. And generosity.

He praised the elephant to all and sundry and all in turn also praised his keeper, the Mahout, for inculcating such noble values in mighty Ramu

Then one day, when Ramu and the Mahout visited the tailor, the tailor presented Ramu with a beautiful red and gold embroidered cloth to cover his head and back. The elephant received it with grace and gratitude and passed it onto his Keeper who draped it over Ramu. The elephant took-on a new regal look. It stopped feeling like a beggar

Every time someone gave him something, Ramu would now raise his trunk in blessing, touch the person and they would be healed and feel whole again. The more love and joy, riches and respect came to Ramu and His Mahout, the Keeper. And the more blessings they gave to those who offered them their offerings. And also to those who did not. And the village was transformed into a lovely world where all helped each other, respected and loved others and lived forever in joy.

Parvez J Daruwala also added this explanation:

Hello Marguerite
… Let me try and explain my working with this story.

In the first, regular version, the elephant throws dirty water on the tailor on being pricked by the needle and it’s like tit for tat. While putting myself in the story - in the skin of the elephant, I realized that when hurt I have a tendency to react with anger and annoyance … and retaliation.

This may manifest in a shouting match with the other person or a silent sulk which lasts for a couple of days. This behavior normally is more with one’s own family - while at work or in social situation, one is more docile, or diplomatic.

I saw parallels with the elephant story -- and this insight kind of jolted me.

So then it struck me that why not have a different ending to the story. Then when you asked us to re write the story, I just did it this way.

I am more aware of my thoughts and emotions and reactions. I try not to react but to respond instead more calmly and peacefully. I think that has been the shift within, It’s not like I am completely changed at one stroke, but I know its just one step towards the 1000 mile journey.

…. Seeing myself as every character in my story (elephant, tailor, mahout and even needle) and how it affected me, gave me insights as I looked at it from the perspective of being the different characters… including being the new clothes being stitched and the dirty water thrown. I see at the end of two days, applications for my personal growth, in my quest for inner peace, fulfillment, joy and abundance.
Parvez

Only by recognizing our unconscious patterns of behavior
and consciously exploring the personal, familial,
and cultural myths underlying them
can we be begin to evolve more effective and creative relationships
with ourselves, others, and the world.

Forgetting To Remember

First, a traditional teaching story:

A great warrior did not return from the hunt. One week passed by, then one month, then a whole year.
His family gave him up for dead, all except his youngest child who every single day would ask, "Where is my father? How soon will he return?"
The child's three older brothers, who were magicians, grew tired of hearing this day after day. They loved their little brother, but felt that if they had news or evidence of their father’s death, he would stop asking. So, finally, they left home and set out to find news of him.
After some days, in a far away, desolate spot, they came upon their father’s broken spear and a pile of bones, and wrapped them all in a blanket to take back home. But once they reached the outskirts of their village, they remembered that they had great powers of magic, and set out to attempt something they had never ever done before.
The first son carefully assembled the bones into a full skeleton; the second son put flesh upon the bones; the third son breathed life into the flesh. The warrior arose and walked into the village where there was great celebration. There he made an announcement: "I will give a fine and precious gift to the one who has brought me back to life."
Each one of his three older sons cried out, "Give it to me, for I have done the most in bringing you back.”
"I will give the gift to my youngest child," said the warrior, “because it is this child who saved my life. One is never truly dead until he is forgotten!"

The two poles of Forgetting and Remembrance are a key feature of Story from different places, even of different times. Walter Benjamin, in his essay, 'The Storyteller', has called that form of memory which creates the chain of tradition, which passes a happening on from generation to generation, "Perpetuating Remembrance," distinguished from "short-lived reminiscence.”

In my workshops, I use two wonderful teaching stories from Traditional tellings – one from the Persian Sufis, known as “Moshkel Gosha”, and another a folktale from Maharashtra, India “A Story for Sundays”. Both tell of a character who is helped in times of trouble, one by The Remover of Obstacles, the other by the Sun God, and all he is asked to do is to “tell of the story”. Failing to do so – and in one case refusing to listen – causes all kinds of mishaps and obstacles that are then magically removed and cleared when the person remembers to tell the story again.

In these two stories, there is the implication of ongoing gratitude, and of sharing – manifested through remembering and re-telling - which are deemed necessary for one to live a blessed and wholesome life.

Remembering is also an important means for a younger generation to learn about the history, culture and values of a group or community, and to keep these alive in the re-telling.
The significance of this Remembering – often through Sharing the Story – also forms the theme of many modern stories today.

Among the more recent ones that uphold this theme is a writer whose work I enjoy, Barbara Kingsolver, whose book “Homeland” is a story set in the 1950s. Gloria’s great grandmother, Great Mam, is a displaced Cherokee, one of the Beloved Women who “keep track of things”. She had moved from her tribal home with the white man whose children she bore. Now Gloria's father decides that the family should take Great Mam back ‘home’ for a last visit before she dies. But Gloria realizes, that Great Mam's heritage has no real signs that it has physically survived in the place she came from, but rather lives in what she has passed on to her great granddaughter, mainly through her stories.

The nickname that Great Mam had for Gloria was "Waterbug", after the creature, according to Native American myth, that retrieved the earth from the bottom of the sea. In recalling this story and all the others that Great Mam told her, Gloria recognizes the importance of remembering Great Mam's stories and so becomes the next one whose task is to retrieve the past, to "keep track of things."

In another book, a small coastal village within the Newfoundland landscape is the setting of Kenneth J. Harvey's rather chilling thriller, “The Town that Forgot How to Breathe”.

The inhabitants of Bareneed, where the book is set, are struck down by an illness in which they forget how to breathe. Strangely, for those afflicted, every breath has to be taken consciously, deliberately, for them to keep breathing at all.

In the book this ‘forgetting’ places the people who live there in a situation where they are compelled to remember, consciously, how to do that which all of us do unconsciously.
Harvey has described it: “They must focus to remember, sort of like the art of storytelling. If you forget the stories you forget who you are, you dissolve away.”

In the story, young Robin and her father Joseph are visiting the town of Bareneed from where their family originated, and are trying to reconnect and heal their own family after a recent divorce. Soon, they become wrapped up in the mystery surrounding the town with its the breathing sickness, the appearance of sea monsters off the coast, the vengeful ghosts on the mainland and perfectly preserved corpses of villagers long ago lost at sea that are being washed upon the shore.

Really, we find, this breathing is tied to their forgetting their old stories. With their forgetting how to breathe, mythical creatures that formally existed only in mariner’s dreams, are being pulled from the sea.

The book ends with the townsfolk traveling from forgetting to remembering, with a return to place in which remembering and telling their stories plays a central part; the seas fill again with fish, and the only lights to be seen are those of fires and candles around which those who are telling tales and listening to stories are gathered.

It may seem rather simplistic – but the point made is that a community that does not pay attention to what is ‘natural’ and crucial and life-giving will have to find ways to recover this, sometimes painfully.

May you find ways to perpetuate remembrance.
Marguerite Theophil

The bridge to other times

The storytellers themselves have been described as the bridge to other times,
and ancient teachings and the tellings of the stories helps to keep these teachings alive.
The children of future generations learn from the storytellers
and apply the lessons of the stories to their own lives.

~ Michael Berman & David Brown