The Story Tellers

Years ago, my family and I were in Kerala in an Ayurvedic ashram where my father was undergoing treatment. There was no cable TV, and very little entertainment in the ashram as the evenings crept up. I was ten years old then. But the magic of those evenings is still something I remember as special. They were made special because of the stories my father liked to tell us.

As the evenings wore on, we( my brother and I) would huddle near him, watch him as he wrapped his shawl around his broad shoulders securely, and start telling us a story. Enraptured, we forgot the mosquitoes that buzzed relentlessly in our ears, or the warm wind that often blew in from the open windows. We were in a world of our own. A world which Abbu had created. We believed that he had read a marvellous book from which he told these stories to us, and I wanted to read it when I grew up.

It was only later that Ammi told me that there was no book. Abbu had made up all the stories on the spot. Princes, thieves, golden-haired princesses, rubies, diamonds, jewel thieves, car-chases, all vied with each other for our attention as he added characters on the fly, and developed the plot whichever way he liked.

My grandmother(maternal) was another charismatic story teller. My brother and I liked to play on the swing set that my father had set up behind our house, and she would roll out a mat there, bring her crochet, and tell us numerous stories that she had read. We would watch her as she would nod at some internal memory, and correct her crochet mistakes by unwinding the yarn, while at the same time, she would tell us the stories of kings, princesses and fairies, from Pariyon ki Alif Laila, a book that I really wanted to read when I was small, but never did because it was in Urdu, and I’m plain lazy when it comes to reading Urdu.

I like to think that I have inherited my story telling genes from my father and my grandmother, although they came from disparate families. If they were alive today, I’m sure they would have been thrilled to take combined credit in my becoming a writer.

Obviously, I will be dedicating Kite Strings to the Story Tellers of my family. Wish you both were here.