Of all the events that the New Indian Express organizes around the country, the Odisha Literary Festival in Bhubaneswar is perhaps my most favourite. With reason—the city is soothing and traffic-free; the people warm and welcoming; and the two days of the festival are spent discussing and reading from books. What could be more idyllic?
I found out this year—the 2014 edition of OLF just ended—that the hearing of stories can sometimes be even more compelling than the reading of them. Professional storyteller Ameen Haque conducted two sessions at the festival. One was with children, the other with adults. Both sets sat agog, listening to his stories and songs, and the wistful tunes from his mouth organ. He brought out every tool from his kit and put them into play, from inflection to body language, to voice modulation and evocative gestures. The audience responded by cheering, laughing and clapping at every turn of every story; some even teared up.
I was whisked back in time to when I was small and would lie in bed under my special quilt or huddled with my brother around my mother and grandmother listening to their stories. My grandmother focused on the Ramayana and Mahabharata; my mother’s sources were more global. She cherry-picked at will, from Oscar Wilde and O’Henry and Chekov and Sukumar Ray. Some stories were read out but most were told from memory. The scary stories had me scrambling closer to the adults, hoping that my brother wouldn’t notice. At the sad ones, I furtively blinked away tears, once again praying for my brother not to see.
I know now that he was probably doing the same. Because, no matter what their age or sex or disposition, stories stir the listeners’ imagination as little else can, and turn them into a participant in the narrative.
It’s not only about emotion. The power of stories, as metaphors or cognitive maps, is on par with the power of ideas. Indeed, stories make meaning of life. They compel us to understand how things work, as well as the possibility of how they could work—for better or worse.
Borrowing from legends, myths and symbols, stories act as a primal form of communication. As storytellers weave their magic, we step out of our shoes and into that of the characters. We drop our defences and differences, and start sharing the others’ passions and purpose. We empathise with both the narrator and the protagonists of the stories, and will them to succeed. In the process, we also understand ourselves better. We learn from the stories that we aren’t alone; there are others facing crises and conflicts. And we are reassured, by the happily-ever-after endings, that resolution will follow.
A while ago, studying storytellers, a neuroscience study by a team of scientists from Princeton found that the more listeners understand a story, the more their brain activity dovetails with the narrator’s. Gifted teachers and managers understand this instinctively. They understand that people are wired to process imagined experiences just as they are capable of understanding real ones. So they turn their lessons and messages into stories and narrate them in a way that makes the listeners not only identify with the situation but also yearn to resolve it.
Be it mathematics, history, or the downsizing of a company, each subject can find a receptive ear and advocate if transmitted as a story. Perhaps the teller can borrow some tools from Haque’s arsenal.
shampa@newindianexpress.com