Impact of storytelling in everyday life

Storytelling as a culture emerged in 700 b.c. However, even then it could not have been a new culture. The ‘bison painting’ at Altamira, Spain, the caves of ‘Bhimbetka’ in India, and of course the Ajanta dates remain debated. Arguably, the first library was in Mesopotamia owned by the Assyrian ruler, Assurbanipal. Mesopotamia shares a distinguished relation with Storytelling as well as India. The most poignant reminder to us of the pride Mesopotamians took in their cities comes at the end of the Gilgamesh Epic, which was written on 12 tablets. Gilgamesh is said to have ruled the city of Uruk sometime after Enmerkar. He was a great hero who subdued people far and wide, he got a shock when his heroic friend died. He then set out to find the secrets of immortality, crossing the waters that surround the world. after a heroic attempt, Gilgamesh failed and returned to Uruk. There he consoled himself by walking along the city wall of Uruk that the long tale of heroism and endeavour fizzles out. He takes consolidation in the city that his people had built.

There are 129864880 books in the world, more than 500000 movies have been produced in the U.S., countless epics in countless ways of life and any digit beyond numbers describes the number of folk stories and ballads. A.K Ramanujan in his famous article wrote, “ there are as many as Ramayan as there is Ram”. Now, we have a population of 759.43 crores. There are a protagonist and antagonist in all of us. Corollary there are countless stories, emotions, ideas within and around us. Stories define us. We are engulfed by them.

We all daydream whether it is a date with that “out of league” crush or imaging a scholarship to Hogwarts! We all distort reality and we all have our own versions of reality. Being in someone else’s shoes is almost as if looking at a different world. Expectations are a major source of stories and daydreaming as a consequence of it. These are the stories we are stitching consciously. Psychologically they are termed creative visualization. We may call them pensiveness, abstraction, vagueness, preoccupation, or woolgathering. The one who claims not to be a storyteller, who are not familiar with linguistics, who do not read and even the illiterate are a part of this daydreaming human race. These are the stories we are ourselves create and stand in them as the protagonist. Traditionally daydreaming is considered leisure and a waste of time. Albeit, its benefits are overlooked. In recent research, the identified costs of daydreaming outnumber the potential benefits. Mooneyham and Schooler reviewed studies published from 1995 and found 29 studies related to costs compared to only 6 recent studies arguing the functional benefits of daydreaming. Some of the major costs of daydreaming summarized by the review are associated with performances such as reading, sustained attention, mood, etc. Mooneyham and Schooler summarized five potential functions daydreaming serves: future thinking, creative thinking, attention cycling, Dishabituation, and relief from boredom.

Future thinking, also known as autobiographical thinking, serves as a way to speculate and anticipate future events. Daydreaming can disrupt external activities, but the benefit of future thinking can be paid off later, as it allows better planning and preparation of future goals. People are more likely to have future-focused daydreams than present-focused and past-focused. What happens when reality doesn’t follow daydreams?

Albeit, it has a subjective answer some people get frustrated, some neutral while others turn maniacs. For instance, while writing this article I have already expected it to be a masterpiece and if it turns not to be one it will break a string of my story or expectations. As a consequence of which we are forced to blame the people around us i.e. the characters of our story or daydream. This is where the characters roll in.

‘The 7 habits of highly effective people’ says “Interdependence is a choice only interdependent people can make”. This is where the character enters. None of the readers loves the book with a focus on only the hero and the hero. We love more inclusive books, the ones with a myriad of characters, which do not hold annoying secrets, which are honest. When our stories, aspirations, and expectations are honest we are more likely to have a more inclusive story in our minds We will reach out to more people and will have a more inclusive story rather than a totalitarian one. It does not suggest that the stories which have the perspective of a single individual are boring. Rather, it gives a distinction between anti-social and asocial narrations. An anti-social narrative like an anti-social person disregards the rest of society and indulges in delinquency while an asocial individual is an introvert, who is the part of society, albeit, who doesn’t involve with the people around him/her very much. Characters affect us in both positive and negative ways. It is interesting to note here that it is these characters who in the long term affect society by actually turning themselves into thoughts. E.g. the principles of Gandhi became Gandhian philosophy and affects not only the contemporary of Gandhi but the generations to come ahead too.

Mahabharata, compiled during 3rd-century B.C. by the efforts of numerous seers and intellectuals cannot be dated as to when the events happened if they did. Still, it is embedded in today’s Indian Culture and philosophy as if it was an everlasting trend. We still find instances of caste, gender biases, aversion as strong as described in the epic in today’s India. It is interesting to note here that Ved Vyasa wasn’t its only author. It was perhaps recorded by chariot rider and was passed through generations of radically changing societies and is still on a way to take its final form. Painters are still painting king Shantanu meeting Goddess Ganga, we still have Kathakali performances describing the meeting of Karna and Kunti and its adapted versions in films filled with misogynistic thoughts. It is correctly said that in India no one reads the Mahabharata for the first time. How curious it is that a battle fought maybe or maybe not an eternity ago affects today’s society. We all have seen people exemplifying clichés like “when a woman crosses her threshold, she ends up in Lanka.” These stories reflect thoughts that were and are even today accepted by people. Mahabharata and Ramayana maybe mythology may be history, but it is certainly our legacy. We behold it, we play its characters and we love retelling it with our own perspectives. We live them in the most literal sense.

Stories affect us psychologically. However, so far we have discussed the stories that either we weave or are embedded in the culture. We are missing the ones that emerge unknowingly. The mundane, biased, and dishonest one -superstitions. This morning there was a sun shower and my mother said, "It’s a sun shower when the devils are getting married " I laughed for a while, and then a whole series of images passed through my eyes. Lord Voldemort and Umbridge walking toward the Church where the officiant asks Vodermort, "do you Tom Riddle accept Umbridge as your wife?" And he replies," yes with the help of god". Then black and pink live happily ever after. Ridiculously!
But a similar set of irrational thoughts have filled our society and these are nothing else but stories that are little challenged. These are perhaps the smallest form of capsule tales.

The English in the 15th century borrowed it from French superstition which continues Latin superstition. While the formation of the Latin word is clear, from the verb super-stare, "to stand over, stand upon; survive", its original intended sense is less clear. It can be interpreted as "‘standing over a thing in amazement or awe”, but other possibilities have been suggested, e.g. the sense of excess, i.e. over scrupulousness or over-ceremoniousness in the performing of religious rites, or else the survival of old, irrational religious habits. The earliest known use as a noun is found in Plautus, Ennius, and later by Pliny, with the meaning of the art of divination. From its use in the Classical Latin of Livy and Ovid, it is used in the pejorative sense that it holds today, of an excessive fear of the gods or unreasonable religious belief, as opposed to religion, the proper, reasonable awe of the gods.

In September 1951, responding to a newspaper article about an astrologer predicting an imminent war with Pakistan, the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru expressed his desire to pass a law against astrology and soothsaying.

In January 1962, Indian astrologers predicted a global catastrophe on Sunday 4 February 1962. People took refuge in the hills to escape the event. The Maharajah of Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal postponed his marriage to Hope Cooke to 1963 on the advice of some astrologers. Business and travel also slowed down. People organized mass prayer meetings. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called it a "matter for laughter". However, this culture is not unique to India. For instance, in Australia when a black cat crosses your way, then you are supposed to do ten push-ups to get rid of ‘bad-omen’. Whatever is the origin of these capsule tales they continue to amaze us and deteriorate perspectives in the most dishonest way? The reading culture is not just meant to romanticize everything but also to establish firm dissents against dishonest stories like the ones which are filled with lies, the ones that circulate orally without being questioned, the ones which power-hungry politician spread and hunger-stricken people consume.

We must ensure that this culture which we inherited from the Mesopotamians and the civilians of Indus valley must not have any dawn. It is a beautiful way of looking at the world. Like any other matter around us in this world storytelling in every sense is a borrowed thought from the generations to come. Write your stories, share them with people around you, and try to know their stories become a part of these reading communities. As George Orwell has said, “How would you appeal to the future when no trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?

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