FOLKTALES:IS IT THE END?

IS IT THE END OF FOLKTALES?

Those were the days!Through long afternoons and cold nights,they lulled me into the arms of dream-filled sleep.It relieved my mind,shaped my ideas,gave wings to my imagination and unfolded an innocent view of my cultural ethos.

The folk tales that my grandma told me!

They came quite spontaneously from her mouth, with a serene flow.Storytelling sessions were my first avenues of socialization.A folk story,from whichever region,has its own unique fragrance.My grandma would swiftly move from mythology to magic, from fabled kingdoms and queens to the humble farmer.She would swiftly adapt stories to suit my childish moods with amazing skill.Storytelling is an art that is dying a fast death and that’s what makes me aware of how much we have left behind in our pursuit of ‘advanced entertainment’.

     We all grow up and ruffle all the feathers of childhood.In hot pursuit of studies,career and family those childhood years seem like a dream,or from another life.But no matter how busy one becomes or how far one travels, most of us cling to the nostalgia of our childhood.Looking back,I remember those days that I have spent hearing all those quaint little stories from my elders. Not only did those stories comfort me then,during bland afternoons or cold nights,they formed the connecting link to my childhood.They introduced me to an altogether different world full of starry eyed joys.

It would all start quite spontaneously.I would go and pester my grandma, ‘Tell me a story’ – a short, peremptory demand, a demand which has been made by millions of little Indian children since the beginning of civilization.And then the story would begin, ‘Once upon a time….’

Technology has made the world exciting yet too mechanical.It has affected social institutions like the joint family,shattering them first into large nuclear families and then into small nuclear families consisting of just 2 to 4 members.For many children,the ‘grandparent’ has become quite an alien!And the kids today are brought up on a diet of youtube, pogo and cartoon network? Morever,when the child’sgrandparents sit by themselves in far flunghomes,and parents remain busy in their duties,who really has the time?

Today when I watch my cousin’s children gulping down their dinner, absorbed in the latest ‘Tintin’ or the latest ‘pokemon’ videos on youtube,I wonder,how can they know what they are missing?They have an astounding number of choices, but divorced from culture, reality,depth and humanity.I remember when I was very small and made faces at my food,my mother would tell me tales that made me gulp my dinner without even realizing it!Even when I was too young to understand her every spoken word!The sound of her stories had a unique hold over me, which cannot be compared to digital entertainment.

Materialistic values,disintegration of the joint family,kinship ties,time constraints,availability of alternatives have all contributed to the decline of folklore and the art of storytelling.My assume that the practice of storytellingand folk tales started in earliertimes,when people gathered around fires to save themselves from biting cold.In order to distract themselves and make children sleep,they used to weave stories from their imaginations.This ability of man to imagine has led to unbelievable strides in the field of technology today.It is not the emperors that gave birth to history and culture;rather,our culture and history was created by those villagers beside the fireplace.In future,it won’t be democracy or technology that will give birth to the tradition of a country,rather the ideas that bring man closer to his ownkind and his environment.

   Folk tales are stories that have been passed from generation to generation, inextricably intertwined with our culture and our past,wherefrom our identity is derived.The parents of this generation are well aware of these stories but many do not have the time or will to pass it on to their children.I fear that when this transmission has almost died the folk stories will also die.Will this be the end?Time will tell! But I still hope and imagine that even today in some far off remote corners of our society there is still a parent or a grandparent telling stories to an inquisitive child (like I once was!) and saving this art of storytelling from being buried in the graveyard of history.