The story teller

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?