The story is about us
Nina Sabnani
Stories mesmerize, invoke curiosity, enhance memory and listening skills, reflect culture and teach lessons for life. In all ages and all places stories have been exchanged between people as they express the deepest desires and anxieties of a society, directly or through subversive means. Whatever be the reasons for storytelling, the narration of a story brings people together, be it situated in a street corner, a cave, or a dark cinema hall.
Commenting on the ubiquitous nature of narrative, Roland Barthes states:
“Narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting…, stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conversation. Moreover, under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative… it is simply there, like life itself.”
The ubiquity of narrative or story can be explained by the various functions that the story fulfills for human beings. Stories have been used to: ‘remember, argue, justify, persuade, engage, entertain, and even mislead audiences’.
Some stories are so old that they have acquired a life of their own. Consider the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, and it is almost impossible to label them as stories. For the believer, the sacred story or myth is an entry into sacred time, where in the act of listening she/he forgets her/his own current situation and ascends into an otherwise inaccessible place, which is on a ‘superhuman or suprahistorical plane’.
A story is a journey, a quest and an adventure in which a protagonist sets out into the unknown to discover their own abilities, fears, foes, and friends. It is about dealing with conflicts, finding the magical instruments and accomplices who help the protagonist and the reader by proxy, to return home to peace and contenetment.
In story reality is simulated or reconstructed in space and time, but this space is not necessarily a real place or a tangible location. This space is often conceptual, appropriated and made accessible through the agency of imagination. Because it exists in the realm of imagination it remains concealed, unexpressed, and therefore uncontested. Time too, in story is not bound by reality; it is either condensed or compressed where ages pass by in the batting of an eye-lid or a moment is stretched over eons or it simply stops, becoming timeless or ‘nontemporal’. With the agencies of memory and imagination, time and space are ordered in story, by which we re-arrange and reenact all that we wish or desire; lament our losses and reconcile ourselves to our given situations. We reconstruct a space in time and locate ourselves within that, giving ourselves the identity and destiny we perhaps seek. In that sense, story is a ‘liminal’ space that we occupy at will and because we invest it with our aspirations and imagination it also becomes a mirror where our desired self is reflected.
As children, we grow up listening to stories; in fact our learning begins with stories. We hear them at bedtime from parents and grandparents, in a classroom from teachers as well as through TV, comic books, and picture books. It is also assumed that stories are simple and optimistic narratives that embed good values and morals in a growing child and expand their imagination. In the past, princes learnt how to be good kings through the stories of Hitopdesha and Panchatantra. The great Mughal emperor Akbar, grew up with stories and adventures of Amir Hamza and Anwari Suhaili. Even Albert Einstein when asked what to teach a child so that he would grow up to be as intelligent as him, replied, “Read him stories.” The enthusiastic mother asked and then what next? He said, “Read him even more stories.”
The power of story cannot be emphasized enough; it is larger than life itself. So strong is the impact of story that often a child’s worldview is shaped by it. Because of its seeming simplicity it seems that stories are as innocent as children; a misnomer since no story is. Zordano (2000) points out that the ‘innocence’ of stories “is an ideological projection by which we ignore their implications, their meanings and the larger story they tell, for adults write the stories.” Every story has a subtext that is assimilated over time and becomes a way of life.
Jack Zipes argues, “Fairy tales deal with very serious problems such as rape in Little Red Riding Hood, the abandonment of children in Hansel and Gretel, the abuse of stepchildren in Cinderella, and the self-sacrifice of women demanded by a patriarchal society in Beauty and the Beast.” Besides dealing with such problems stories also influence children’s attitudes and assumptions about human relations. The good fairy that is fair and kind versus the evil stepmother who is dark and ugly affects attitudes towards people in real life who are fair or ugly. A dark person is not always trusted and to be ‘fair and lovely’ becomes every individual’s secret dream.
Interestingly, stories are told again and again and interpreted afresh in each era. For example, the Panchatantra attributed to Vishnu Sharma from 3rd century BC are stories in Sanskrit that were told in five parts to the children of a king to teach them the ways of the world. The stories of Panchatantra have been told and retold in many languages and continue to be told today. But they are not told in the same way. The perspectives change, the hard working tortoise who wins the race is no longer seen as a role model in Vikram Seth’s Beastly Tales from Here and There. In his version it’s the rabbit, who wins despite losing the race. In yet another version of the same hare and tortoise story by Dhimant Vyas, the rabbit wins the race, but does so by using steroids and is discovered by a sting operation carried out by an owl reporter. It is the same story and yet the context changes, the focus shifts and we have a new perspective. The known story becomes a vehicle for communicating new ideas.
In a similar vein, we have examples of stories from Sinbad the Sailor being used for geography lessons in an interactive media programme and Newton’s laws of motion are explained in the form of animated cartoons.
In my own work I have explored the potential of images as prompts for storytelling. I have designed a book Home (published by Tulika Books, Chennai), which is inspired by my study of the Kaavad tradition of Rajasthan. The book is a nonlinear one, with multiple folded panels with images and a few words. The idea is to invite children to invent stories by looking at the images and choosing one or more as a starting point for their narration. The findings have offered many insights into the deep relation between words and their association with images. A dark person holding balloons was described as a thief who had stolen the balloons and a group of nomadic people was identified as ambassadors who were going around the country creating awareness about their culture.
This clearly suggests that such notions are a composite result of our own experiences and the stories we have heard. While it is important to introduce stories as a way of learning we may also encourage children to tell their own stories as they give us deep insights into their worldview and aspirations.
The author is a Professor at the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay. She is an artist and storyteller who uses film, illustration and writing to tell her stories. She can be reached at ninamsabnani@iitb.ac.in.
