An old post office with a rusted gate, a quaint temple on a hillock that nobody knows outside the town, a life where people wait for Wednesday evening to tune into Geetmala on the radio.
From one of Simply Stories sessions held in the city
Chennai:
Many of us might be able to relate to this surrounding while growing up. And if you wanted to relive those days, head to one of the storytelling sessions hosted by Simply Stories. Started by Arjun Narayanan, Karthik Krishna and Shweta Balambal, Simply Stories is an endeavour to keep the tradition of oral storytelling alive.
“Storytelling has been an important medium across the world. Remember how keenly we listened to stories narrated by our grandparents? But after we started giving importance to technology, we stopped sharing interesting stories. Through Simply Stories, we are trying to bring back the oral storytelling tradition,” says Arjun.
The trio picks up a theme and organise a monthly session where stories from Indian fiction, folklores, classics and legends are narrated. “Stories are one of the best ways of connecting with people. Most of us have stopped reading stories in our mother tongue and in our sessions we narrate stories written by Indian writers like Kalki Krishnamurthy (Tamil), Changampuzha Krishna Pillai (Malayalam), Premchand (Hindi-Urdu), Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (Bengali) and so on. We always pick a topical theme and the last one was trains. We had stories about railways, of partition (Train to Pakistan is a historical novel by Khushwant Singh), stories by Ruskin Bond that’s set in a small-town railway station, an account by Mahatma Gandhi on how dirty trains are in India (that was written around 100 years ago), etc.”
The founders believe that it’s a narcissistic exercise to tell stories from personal experiences when the objective is to keep stories of our country alive. “What happens in most of the storytelling sessions is that the person narrates something from his/her experience. We have a plethora of stories in India and we are bringing back these stories through oral storytelling method,” says Shweta.
The upcoming session is about stories from small towns in India. “Small towns in our country have contributed a lot to our community. Even mainstream writers have brought back small town sensibilities in their writing. Through this, we bring stories that will remind you of life from a time gone by,” sums ups Arjun.