kathai keLu, kathai keLu

Story telling is a passion with me. It is not that I am an expert narrator. I certainly do not enthrall my audience. People have criticised that I am a downright bad speaker, what with a craving to push in as many words as possible within the unforgiving minute and a tendency to mix my own insights with the actual story. (Intha insight, outsight ellam where disappearing when it comes to my research is something which my guide would like to know). But inspite of my critics and the hostile attitude of listeners I literally live to tell a tale.

I have found children to be the most stringent examiners of my narrative abilities. They love listening to stories and they keep me on my toes by reacting spontaneously. If they don't like a story or think they would be better off else where, they don't suddenly remember that they forgot their keys and ask to be excused. They just leave. But when they are enjoying it, their shining faces are a sight to behold. Many have been the happy hours that I have spent telling stories to my little cousins, nieces, and other kids.

Narration is an art. The audience has to be under the narrator's spell. One has to ensure that not a word is missed, not an emotion lost and not a joke unlaughed. Kodambakkam directors are invariably master story tellers. What they can't get right in the movies, they actually do when they narrate the story to our heroes. And so confident are they of the different fare they are providing, that when interviwed on sets, they invariably say: "Ithu oru different'ana subject...tamil'la intha mathiri kadhai vanthathe kidyadhu......." The Friday review would reveal this different movie to be a college campus love story between a rich girl and poor boy, with the love triumphing at the end. Very different indeed.

But maybe that is doing an injustice to these master narrators. Many a hero falls for the narration skills of these men. The best illustration of how a story is told in Kodambakkam is the scene from Kadhalikka Neram Illai, where Nagesh narrates a horror story to Balaiah. By the end of the scene Balaiah is no more knowledgable about the story than he was at the beginning, because Nagesh's narration actually narrates nothing. He just descibes the scene and describes it well enough to frighten Balaiah big time, just the way any Kodambakkam director/story teller worth his salt would. No wonder Vijaykanth keeps remaking so many of his movies.

And this capacity to mesmerise through real/virtual story telling comes as no wonder, because story telling is something Indians have always been very good at. Indians have a rich heritage of story telling. Stories have been always been a medium of instruction. Stories were used to pass down values from one generation to next. In the bygone ages when values and morals did not change as fast as they do today, stories no doubt helped patch up small gaps between generations. When he sits down to create and narrate stories, sky is the limit for the Indian story teller. He lets the horse of imagination free to wander. Stuff like censor, morals, values actually take a backstage as the horse gallops across the rich terrain of imagination. And the resulting output is a rich collection of stories ranging from the fantastic to the absurd. From the educational Panchtantra, to romantic Kadambari(which is a story labyrinth, what with story inside a story inside a story inside a....). From the Hindu Mahabharata, to the Buddhist Jataka. From the intellectual Vikram and Vetal tales to the deeply sarcastic Parmartha Guru tales by Veera Maamunivar.

Ofcourse story telling is not every one's cup of tea. There is a large population out there who can't tell a tale crisply and engagingly. Many a wannabe story teller can only do a "avan enna sonnanu'na....athu vanthu.....ithunuttan....athavathu vanthu...aven...." type job. If this person is your guest or social superior or worse if he is your boss, you are in big trouble. But actually in the Industrial age, there exists a separate industry for the employment of such human rambams. Mega serials, they call it.


PS: After reading the prepost one of my friends asked me whether the last paragraph was autobiographical. Maybe he be torn apart by a Velociraptor.