RamGanapathy.com

Category: Parenting, Story Telling

  • Catching the Bus

    Yes I remember that very well. Every day from when I was 11 until joining college, I went through this routine which was painful but necessary part of the day.

    Catching the bus. Entering it; finding your spot; and more importantly, getting out unscathed.

    No, it was not simple.

    The first day to the high school – around 10 kms from home – was also my first ever bus trip by myself. Standing amidst a crowd of busy people at the bus stop – school kids big and small, families, and irritated, lonely office goers – I remember feeling anxious but proud of being on my own.

    Imagine the 80’s in India. A typical bus stop at a middle class neighbourhood. No mobile phones. You have to chat with strangers otherwise the wait for the bus would feel much longer. Usually I was with friends and occasionally my parents would decide to start early to office and give me company.  But mostly I found myself among a crowd of unfamiliar people.

    Suddenly there was a jostling. I look towards the end of the road.  Appears like a mirage, but it was indeed the bus emerging from nowhere. The red and white coloured metal box carrying a sea of humanity is going to stop near me anytime. And I need to figure out a way to get in and find some space to stand if not sit. Already, the sound and sight of that beast  had made me nervous, especially the ear piercing horn announcing to the world that no one dare stand in the way.

    Everyone gets ready; no queues, no courtesy. Bags are lifted from the ground; conversations pause; a sense of alertness kicks in. Families make strategies – who gets in first to look for seats for others and who should carry the heavy bags etc. As the bus stops, I realized one of the fundamental assumptions going wrong. You expect a bunch of people getting down to make space for ones getting in. That never happened. But no one seemed to care. Everybody barged in. Actually, my attempt to get in to the bus was effortless (alas, not painless) since, all I did was to stand in the way of this bulky guy who wanted to desperately get in. The raging bull that he was, he ensured I was shovelled right into it.

    There were days when the arriving bus wouldn’t stop near us. You see, the driver would want to keep his sanity (and his job) when he knows there is a physical limit. He might prefer to avoid a stampede and stop a lot farther from the bus stop, hoping to only offload people and not let anymore in. But he is unaware that we are also good sprinters and nothing would deter us from making a mad rush towards the bus.

    Most days we make it. Entering that way as an unwelcome passenger, you need to avoid making eye contact with the driver (or the ticket conductor). I look back at the scene now and it resembles the one from the movie Avatar where Jake Sully waits for his dragon on the top of the mountains. While everyone gets their carrier, he is left wondering if he would ever have a chance to be on top of his own dragon until when he is assured by his girlfriend of the tribe ,”You choose your Ikran, but you have to wait until it choses you”.

    Some days I get up late and I would already know that the only chance to get to school in time would mean that I run and run towards the bus stop. There are other factors too at play: the straight but uneven path from my home to the bus stop via a dumping ground; speed and position of the bus that has already commenced from the previous stop; probability that it would even stop close to bus station. I never had to struggle for real life examples when I learnt Pythagoras theorem, Trigonometry, Newton’s laws etc. at school.

    Catching a bus was not just an event. It now seems to me as a metaphor  for grabbing opportunities, taking risks and wriggling my way out of the crowd to find a spot. It has prepared me well for the real journeys later.

    To travel away from a familiar home to new places full of hope and unknowns.

  • A story a day

    Every night I’m asked by my daughter to narrate a story . It cannot repeat, should have no traces of any other similar storyline. Unique, and every night. I don’t remember exactly when it started, but it sure has become addictive for her to be able to listen to a new tale as she dozes off. Not quite the easier part of the day for me. Late night calls from work (and other excuses) kept me out of this daily ritual from time to time. But most nights I’m confronted by this intellectual challenge; one I had under-estimated.

    The easy and lazy options were over in quick time : crow tales, kings and battles, village situations, big ships and mountains and even dinosaurs. I remember once scratching my head midway into a narrative – when all I did was blabber – no logic, no twists, no ending in sight; the story never made any sense. She had slept by then. Waking up next day, she told me that was awful. I realized I had reached the low point.

    To make things easy for me, she sometimes relents and says I could repeat myself – which makes it even more stressful. I wonder how artists feel when they struggle some days – and realize they cannot create anything fresh and inspiring.

    I’m not an aspiring artist, but why is it so difficult to cook up a story? Perhaps it has to do with the effort and discipline in thinking at the end of a long day. Creativity is not easy. There is a whole body of knowledge on Story Telling which is leveraged in many domains like entertainment (of course!), marketing, education, politics,  etc. You will find the many benefits, techniques and tools about Story Telling which is also an oft-repeated phrase at work these days. But for me, the overt focus on the preparation, structure and the outcome  of a narration drains out the energy. How does one make it easier and smooth ?

    Perhaps I’m unsettled at the larger question too: what should the story be about? What should she know about the world at her age. In fact, I worry about what she should (need) not know at this time of her life – what with the blitzkrieg of unfiltered content exposure, 24×7. Going beyond the simple, direct and consumable stuff – how do you slowly take her to the depth and meaning of things. You have to be cautious though, by being less preachy.

    Until I figure that out, I have turned to another easy option: reality. I have begun taking trips to the memory lane, going to my childhood days, fishing out incidents that I still remember – to find something interesting and worthwhile to tell her.  After all, where else does one get plots like these: how I cried at primary school once, not being able to remove the shoe laces – until when the girl next to me used her hair pin to untangle the mess. How I never figured out a way of dealing with bullies at school. Or how I let the guy next to me copy from my answer sheet in the (false, as it turned out) hope of him being friendly during the soccer play that evening. And how I stressed out on exam nights. Real examples of mishaps, missed opportunities, major failures and yes, the big points and successes.

    It is working. She says she loves these more than fiction. She wouldn’t  know (yet) that’s because I might not have stuck to the truth all the time.