A touch of magic and fantasy

It was a treat for children and parents alike; a storytelling session organised by Kathalaya was recently hosted at the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan.

The auditorium at the institute was packed to full capacity.

What was surprising, however, was that the audience didn’t comprise exclusively of children — plenty of adults had come to partake of the tales as well. While the children crowded in front, beside the podium, the adults chose to sit at the back and enjoy the show.

The evening began with well-known storyteller and educator, Geeta Ramanujam. Rather than announcing a fixed line-up of tales she intended to narrate, she offered the audience a choice. She listed out a few of the stories from her repertoire, and put the matter up to vote.

The list included some rather fantastic titles — such as ‘The Lady Who Flew Up With The Balloons’ and ‘The Man With An Ugly Heart’. After some deliberation, however, the audience selected a tale called ‘The Lion And The Mosquito’.

The story itself revolved around the inhabitants of a jungle — focussing on a lion, and a mosquito which challenges his title of king. Given that the story had so many animals in it, it gave Geeta a lot of scope to keep the audience entertained — her impressions of an elephant, rabbit and of course, the mosquito, had the children hooting with laughter. The story involved plenty of sound effects, which the children helped in creating as well — such as snapping their fingers repeatedly to denote raindrops. She also used extravagant gestures and kept the session interactive to hold on to her audience’s attention.

The children often added to the story themselves, quickly shouting out suggestions every time Geeta paused for breath. As a result, she also employed a certain degree of improvisation. As the story drew to an end — with the mosquito defeating the lion and assuming the title of kind of the jungle — she asked the audience whether they would prefer a happy or sad evening.

“How many of you want a happy ending? For all of you, the story ends here. But for the ones who want something different — here’s a different ending,” she said.

The second ending was a touch more brutal. It ended with the mosquito flying about and irritating all the animals, until he made the mistake of travelling to a swamp. Here, a particularly hungry spider ate him and brought an end to the whole saga.

The second storytelling session included two international narrators: Martin Ellrodt and Dirk Nowakowski, who are from Germany. Both are extremely passionate storyteller; while Martin teaches the art of storytelling at various universities across Germany, Dirk is also involved in puppet theatre. Both narrated the story at the same time. Since Dirk isn’t fluent in English, he spoke in German and this was then translated for the audience by Martin.

Their story was an out-and-out fantasy, which revolved around a little boy called Kamikana. His life appeared to be tinged with magic, since although he grew taller, he could never grow taller.

The tale proceeded to describe Kamikana’s fear of the sea, and how, upon his
mother’s insistence, he made his maiden voyage to the ocean.