Storytelling: generation to generation – Gaurav Kumar

“If you listen carefully, you will become a different person by the end of the
story”. -Vyas, Mahabharata.

Man has learned to speak in the universe, along with that he has also
learnt to listen and tell stories. ‘Kahaani’ was born in a heart full of the
wonder of man, the need to know others, and the desire to communicate
his own memoirs. The storyteller has been seeking for the secrets of the
surroundings loaded with the known and unknown mysteries of the
human psyche since time immemorial.

Every country develops knowledge and research in
accordance with the resources and means available
to it in its particular social situation. We discover
surprising similarities between countries when we
undertake a comparative analysis of them. Writing has
been adopted as a medium by all civilised countries
in order to preserve the means of knowledge. The
process of writing started in different mediums:
leather, cloth, stones, and bhoj patra (Betula utilis). It
is difficult to say in which genre the art of storytelling
started, man must have started writing first, but in
the view of scholars, ‘story’ became the first mode
of expression. At present, this genre is the most powerful and most popular genre of literature. Every

ection of society, whether youngsters, the elderly,
pundits, rich, or poor, has been eager to experience
or hear the story at any given time.

The narrative was born along with the man, and
listening to stories became the basic nature of human
beings, which is why narrating stories became a
common practice in every civilised and uncivilised
society. India too has a long and rich tradition of
storytelling. They have become a fundamental part
of our society and culture. Films, OTT, novels, news
media, religion, architecture, and painting are just a
few of the fields where we can observe the impact of
stories, and this act continues to be generated in every
instant of our lives. Oral stories have traditionally
been passed down from one generation to another,
and the concept of storytelling being blurred with the
passage of time.