‘Tell me a story, please,’ I pestered any adult around me and sort of button holed the person and forced him or her to share stories. And I was lucky too, coz my father despite his ‘I don’t know anything, I am only 10 std’ stance, is a smart performer with several one-liners and theatrical tricks up his sleeve. Several of my relatives, elders, uncles and aunts had to cough up stories real or imaginary at my persistence or just to get rid of me and they did it with elan, sometimes while grazing the cow, or while out on a walk or just lying down waiting for the sleep to set in.

More than anything that I learnt during my graduation at the famed Govt. Victoria College, Palakkad, what I remember the most is Dr. Vijayan Nair’s elaborate descriptions of his travels in Italy, the gondolas, the piazza and of course the story of how a young impressionable Mary Godwin, eloped with PB Shelley to become Mary Shelley and later, the author of ‘Frankenstein’.

In the classrooms,as a teacher myself, I never lose a chance to tell a story, having learnt a trick or two from the experience of listening to Dakshayani Teacher’s, ‘ Do you know this story? followed by animated narrations from the Mahabharatha or the Ramayana or any other literary text’. That is where, we , the blessed students at LSN Convent, Ottapalam, listened enamoured of how women were supposed to be or how the princes wooed the beauties of yesteryears and travelled to many lands of fantastical imagination.

Those were times when stories seemed to fill my world from books and from the narrations and somehow it seemed that everyone was a ‘walking talking story machine’, if only you sat down to listen to them, giving more food for fantasy to my already ‘very wandering mind.’

Yet, in these days when I struggle to write and batter my brain with the process of ‘phd-iation’, I am regularly asked to set aside time in an authoritative tone, ‘ you better make time for me ok, girl! Once I go back, what will you do!’ followed by a smirk and an eye roll.

And that does it. i forget work and we create the ambience to sit down and watch movies curated by her highness, who is very well versed about movies as she is about restaurants.

Nothing is more swee than this experience of sharing a movie time with my girl, every day, day in and day out And she never tires of showing to those in her circle, the movies of her choice. So we sit down for a good time and time flies, till I fret, ‘I also got to go to work!’.

Somehow I am reminded of my good friend at Victoria, Dhanya Ramachandran who was such a compulsive movie watcher that not a day was spent without watching atleast 2 movies with DVDs lent from the nearby shop.

And yes, my little girl must have watched ‘ Chathikkatha Chandu’ atleast 50 times and it only stopped when the shopkeeper who was well acquainted with her, shrugged rather helplessly, ‘ child, it is out of stock, we don’t have it anymore!’

The love for stories runs deep, I guess, and well, if no one said it before, let me say that ‘ a story a day, keeps the smiles intact and the dreams as well.

So, keep watching movies, reading and telling stories, keep the child alive in you, and your eyes will twinkle no matter what!

Just saying 🙂