Story telling was one of the earliest forms of art I was introduced to. In it I found my first super star, my grandmother. I remember fondly how my sister and I would huddle up around her and insist that she tells us a story. She would sit down calmly and vividly explain to us the details of the scenes and characters that we ended up falling in love with.

One of my biggest influences from this part of my life was the story of “Chandrahasa”, the mythical south Indian king whose namesake I became. Considering the importance that stories had in my life, I always considered stories as a wonderful way to reach out to people.

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a single day workshop on story telling. The workshop was organized by Hippocampus as a part of the HOO’s Tales – Carnival of Stories. Conducted by professional story tellers, the event was a wonderful reminder about the power of stories.

Conducted by world renowned story tellers Jeeva Raghunath and Craig Jerkins, the workshop was a wonderful mix of learning an ancient art form, learning about how to communicate and reach out to children and taking a walk down memory lane listening to stories again.

With a diverse group which included teachers, parents, grand mothers and IT professionals, the workshop was wonderfully entertaining and enlightening. During its course we were ourselves made to perform and we had short discussions about what worked and why. During the course of the evening we had all woken up that hidden story teller within us and it simply felt great.

I personally believe that events like these are a must for young parents. The amount of experience and insight to be gained is enormous and who knows it might turn you into that cool parent :)

Ps: The Carnival of Stories continue in Chennai for the next couple of days, If you can attend the workshop. Details: Carnival Of Stories