It is so heartening to learn that some of our schools invite Storytellers for regular sessions, and one that I know of even has a full-time Teller on its staff. Sadly, in other parts of the country, in families of our traditional storytellers, the children make a break with the profession – most often because they barely manage to scrape together a living. Our Ajis, or grandmothers were our link with the world of Story, but these days with the decline in inter-generational living, we lose out on that as well.
Telling, we have believed must happen. Many cultures believe that if you have a story to tell – and don’t tell it – strange things will happen. Stories have unique and startling ways of making sure they get told!
A Kannada story narrated by A. K. Ramanujan, who collected and edited the most definitive collections of Indian folktales, is a wonderful example of this. This is how it goes:
There once lived a woman who knew a story. She also knew a song. But she kept them to herself, never told anyone the story or sang the song. Imprisoned within her, the untold story and unsung song felt choked, trapped. They decided to run away.
One day, as she slept with her mouth open, the story escaped, fell out of her, and taking on the material form of a pair of shoes, sat outside the house. The song too hurriedly followed, and took the shape of something like a man's coat, and hung on a peg.
This caused the husband to be very suspicious, specially when she kept insisting she did not know whose they were or where they had come from. In a rage, he picked up his blanket, and went off to the nearby temple to sleep.
The flames in the lamps of the town, once they were put out, did not really go out. They moved to the temple and spent each night there, gossiping together till the lamps were lit again the following day. On this night, all the lamps from all the houses had reached the temple - except one, which came in much later. “Why are you so late tonight?” the others asked. “Because at my house, the couple quarreled late into the night,” said the flame. “Why did they quarrel?” The flame told them the events. As he finished, the others flames asked: “But where did the coat and shoes come from?”
“The lady of our house knows a story and a song. She never tells the story, and has never sung the song to anyone. The story and the song got suffocated inside; so they got out and have turned into a coat and a pair of shoes. Seeing this made the husband furious. It seems they took revenge.”
The husband, lying under his blanket in the temple, heard the lamp's explanation. His suspicions were cleared. When he got home at dawn, he woke his sleeping wife and asked her about her story and her song.
“What story? What song?” she asked. She had, sadly, forgotten both of them.
A Korean story tells of a boy who, every night at bedtime listened to stories from a favorite family servant. But the boy didn’t like to share the stories he heard, and made the servant promise the stories would stay in that room.
However, when it is time for him to get married and leave that room for his new home, the servant hears the story-spirits plotting to kill the young man in revenge for keeping them locked up, and the faithful servant manages to thwart these plans of a story with poisoned water, one with a deadly snake, and another with a red-hot poker, and finally reveals all this to the young man who promises never to keep stories to himself, but to tell them to anyone who cares to listen.
Among the Cree of Manitoba, there is a similar belief that stories, when they are not being told, live off in their own villages where they go about their own lives. Every now and then, however, a story will leave its village and seek a person to inhabit. Some person will abruptly be possessed by the story, and soon will find himself or herself telling the tale out into the world, singing it back into active circulation.
Go tell your story; sing your song.
Marguerite Theophil
The stories that find us
Australian Aborigines say that the big stories-the stories worth telling and retelling,
the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life –
are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking
like predators hunting their prey in the bush.
~ Robert Moss, Dreamgates
Telling, we have believed must happen. Many cultures believe that if you have a story to tell – and don’t tell it – strange things will happen. Stories have unique and startling ways of making sure they get told!
A Kannada story narrated by A. K. Ramanujan, who collected and edited the most definitive collections of Indian folktales, is a wonderful example of this. This is how it goes:
There once lived a woman who knew a story. She also knew a song. But she kept them to herself, never told anyone the story or sang the song. Imprisoned within her, the untold story and unsung song felt choked, trapped. They decided to run away.
One day, as she slept with her mouth open, the story escaped, fell out of her, and taking on the material form of a pair of shoes, sat outside the house. The song too hurriedly followed, and took the shape of something like a man's coat, and hung on a peg.
This caused the husband to be very suspicious, specially when she kept insisting she did not know whose they were or where they had come from. In a rage, he picked up his blanket, and went off to the nearby temple to sleep.
The flames in the lamps of the town, once they were put out, did not really go out. They moved to the temple and spent each night there, gossiping together till the lamps were lit again the following day. On this night, all the lamps from all the houses had reached the temple - except one, which came in much later. “Why are you so late tonight?” the others asked. “Because at my house, the couple quarreled late into the night,” said the flame. “Why did they quarrel?” The flame told them the events. As he finished, the others flames asked: “But where did the coat and shoes come from?”
“The lady of our house knows a story and a song. She never tells the story, and has never sung the song to anyone. The story and the song got suffocated inside; so they got out and have turned into a coat and a pair of shoes. Seeing this made the husband furious. It seems they took revenge.”
The husband, lying under his blanket in the temple, heard the lamp's explanation. His suspicions were cleared. When he got home at dawn, he woke his sleeping wife and asked her about her story and her song.
“What story? What song?” she asked. She had, sadly, forgotten both of them.
A Korean story tells of a boy who, every night at bedtime listened to stories from a favorite family servant. But the boy didn’t like to share the stories he heard, and made the servant promise the stories would stay in that room.
However, when it is time for him to get married and leave that room for his new home, the servant hears the story-spirits plotting to kill the young man in revenge for keeping them locked up, and the faithful servant manages to thwart these plans of a story with poisoned water, one with a deadly snake, and another with a red-hot poker, and finally reveals all this to the young man who promises never to keep stories to himself, but to tell them to anyone who cares to listen.
Among the Cree of Manitoba, there is a similar belief that stories, when they are not being told, live off in their own villages where they go about their own lives. Every now and then, however, a story will leave its village and seek a person to inhabit. Some person will abruptly be possessed by the story, and soon will find himself or herself telling the tale out into the world, singing it back into active circulation.
Go tell your story; sing your song.
Marguerite Theophil
The stories that find us
Australian Aborigines say that the big stories-the stories worth telling and retelling,
the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life –
are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking
like predators hunting their prey in the bush.
~ Robert Moss, Dreamgates
