Buckle up those tiny shoes and sneak into the woods. Let a chill run down your spine at the sight of the ferocious tiger seeking help from fellow animals to get his patch of land cleaned up.
Console the ant-eater armadillo and lazy deer as they walk past you after being rejected for their inefficiency in cleaning the tiger’s land. Give the diligent goat a pat on the back for systematically grazing the land free of grass. Kids, a major challenge here would be for you to imagine the tiger stripeless. Weird much?
How did the tiger get his stripes? is a South American folktale, which, though may not give a scientifically befitting explanation to its title, is sure to impart a lesson that will remain with the kids. With the growl of tigers and bleat of goats, Vasugi Ram Manohar’s Madras Story Works will bring animal characters to life this coming Saturday, for tiny tots aged three to nine.
The mystery about the tiger’s stripes is revealed only towards the end of the story. The tiger (embrace yourself before you hear this) gets the stripes due to the wounds inflicted on himself while he attempts to break free from the stockade. But who built the stockade? The innocent and witty goat did. The tiger had termed him (the goat) indolent in spite of him working hard in cleaning up the tiger’s land.
The clever goat had played his cards well by faking a story about apocalypse and having the tiger locked inside a stockade to teach him a lesson. A symbol of valiance and power, the tiger did not rest until he freed himself from the stockade.
If you were trying to logically find the acceptable hero in the story, there is no right or wrong choice. Nor is there a definite moral to the story. Vasugi says that children come up with fascinating insights in the interactive session that follows the narration. For the event on Saturday, Vasugi plans to conduct a crafts workshop after the narration wherein the kids get to make tiger masks and more importantly mess up with colours and glue!
“Parents come to me complaining that kids are scared of talking in front of the class,” Vasugi says. The story telling sessions, she affirms, would help remove the inhibitions and enhance a child’s communication and presentation skills. The event will be held at 11 am at Grassroots, Egmore, on June 29. For details, contact
vasugi83@gmail.com