“You’re so talkative, mama,” said my mom when I was a little girl. It was during the early 2000s when walking to school with your loaded bag of books, set according to the timetable of the day, and your mom holding your hand was the most interesting activity.
The distance from my home to school was just about the duration of three classic retro Bollywood songs. Though I didn’t listen to them while going to school because I was always busy making my mom listen to my stories. I was nine, with a brain full of questions and a heart full of emotions, ready to be spilled out only before mom. Every moment of the day, every experience, was a story to me, a story waiting to be told to mom.
I would start narrating an instance from my day that would ideally take two minutes to share, but with my details, mom would end up cooking my favourite bhindi sabji by then! Sometimes she enjoyed my stories, but most of the time she would say, “Mama, say it fast, no?” with a tired-but-you’re-my-daughter-so-I-will-be-patient expression.
Today, years later, when I ask her about my favourite bhindi recipe, she thinks a little, pauses a little, and shares it with me. But if you ask her about the instance I shared with her while she was making that recipe, she would instantly start sharing without thinking, without pausing. And I think this is where my belief in stories got stronger!
If Ramesh Sippy had thought Thakur could kill Gabbar and The End, we wouldn’t have gotten an iconic movie like Sholay. We wouldn’t have witnessed the beauty of Barfi! if Anurag Basu had thought Barfi could rescue Jhilmil from her house and The End. The list is endless!
But to put it simply, storytelling has a greater impact on people than anything else.
The other day, I was cleaning my room, and my house help’s curious kid asked me, “Didi, what if stories, or storytelling as a concept, didn’t exist in this world?” I froze in that moment, without an answer. I felt scared, realising how different the world would have been without stories. Isn’t every minute that passes by a story to tell?
Today, I am working in advertising, narrating stories every day, curating stories for every brand, and being thankful to the 9-year-old me, who never missed details and shared stories worth two minutes in ten minutes.
Ah, reminds me of Maggi; never mind!
But, surprisingly, mom asks me to talk more and talk slower now. Irony, isn’t it? Maybe she needs more of my storytelling now than ever before!
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