Few are the stories that become timeless, i.e. time fails to
fade these stories and generations after generations listen to them with the
same curiosity. Authors of these stories thus achieve immortality through these
timeless stories. But there are selected few who become immortal by narrating
these timeless stories to everyone, I think that’s what their job is, to
narrate stories.
“Kathna waale uncle” (uncle who was born in village of
Kathna, Bihar) is what we called him, and was one of my dearest uncles and
probably my childhood hero. He was an old man and I have always seen him the
same, not a single extra or less grey hair, probably people like him, never age
beyond certain age. He visited us at least once a year, never got chocolates
for anyone, stayed with us for couple of days and would go away. I always
wondered why he visited us all the time but we never visited him at all? I wondered
it would be so cool to find where he lived, so that I can visit him at my will
for something that made him one of my favorite uncles. But, my mom always said,
he lives very far away and probably takes seven days and seven nights to reach
his house.
Narrating stories is what he did and kids loved him for his
stories and his experiences with life. When he visited us, I used to wake up on
time, go to school, skip playing with friends and rush to him to hear his
stories. As far as I could remember, he never repeated any of his stories and
each story was uniquely interesting in its own way. Once the night would fall,
even elders would gathered around to listen to the stories of great kings, bad daemons,
brave men, gods and goddesses and many more. I would fall asleep listening to
his stories and would often dream about being the hero of one of his stories.
He never denied anyone if asked for a story and every kid or
adult in the village would call him uncle; even my parents called him uncle. I
used to argue about how can he be uncle to everyone and as he lived in our
house, no one else had rights to call him their uncle. Later we moved to a city
and slowly he faded in my memories, or I’ll say he got fossilized to be
excavated once in a while. I would sometimes ask my mom if she had any clue
about where he might be. I would wonder, after my family moved to city, he
might have visited our village as he did every year and how he might have felt
not seeing anyone in the house to greet him, no kid dying to listen to his
stories.
Eventually I discovered few things about him and now, I respect him even more. Throughout his life he travelled from village to
village narrating stories to everyone. He never had money hence he would never
get any chocolates and had to walk miles before he could reach the next
village. When the evening would embrace him, he would just knock at someone’s door
and spend couple of days with the family and narrate his stories to everyone in
the village and then again start his journey to the next village.
He had been doing this all his life. Almost everyone in all
the villages he visited, knew him and the news would spread like wild fire if
he camped in any one village. He was a very wise man and people would not only
come to him for his stories but for seeking advice. He was wise probably
because he had seen life more closely than anyone else. His stories were just
not a craft of his fiction, but based on reality and always had some lessons to
learn. He would stich his experiences of life around kings, gods, ghosts and
everything else to teach people about how to live life.
My mom always said, he had centipedes tied in his feet which
would never let him be at one place. Few said he had mole on his sole of the
foot and people, who have it, spend lot of time travelling. But now I know,
none of it was true; he travelled because he chose to do so. He thought, it was
his duty to teach people the difference between good and bad, and he chose
stories as his medium of instruction. As he would always travel, he never got
married and never thought of settling at one place as everyone else did, he
sacrificed his life for the benefit of society. He spread his storied through
travelling because in those days there were no televisions, newspapers or any other
modes of information exchange but to physically be amongst people.
One day I learned that god wanted someone to narrate stories
to the almighty himself and hence, he is no more physically amongst but only in
our memories. I still wonder how adventurous his life would have been,
travelling all the time, meeting new people, narrating his stories, and feeling
happy about his stories creating change in lives of others. He had no money but
was not poor, had no family still was uncle to everyone, never possessed anything
yet always had shelter. I think he lived larger than life and has become
immortal to everyone who listened to his stories.
In this modern era, are there any more people left who still keep telling stories, still keeping the characters of the fiction alive in the heads of kids? If not, how will the authors of those timeless stories ever become immortal in absence of such selfless story tellers?
