News is so dreary nowadays. There are always discussions on
who didn’t do what, or if something was done then what exactly was wrong with
what was done. Rapes, murders, lies, scams, random acts of perversion(yeah, I saw
the video of asaram bapu dancing too :( ),
defeat at the hands of the aussies – these are the depressing things that fill
our news nowadays. So today, I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on the news and some minister called
his predecessor ‘Sheik Chilli.’ Now of course, this is in relation to one of
the aforementioned depressing categories, but I am still glad because that one
name took me back to entirely another era.
I don’t know how many people know about that simpleton named
Sheik Chilli. I heard about him for the first time when I was about three or
four from an old man who used to carry them around in his head. They were like pacifiers;
when we troubled him too much, he’d start with one
‘ Aaj kaunsi sunoge?’
‘Sheik Chilli wali!’
or
“Rana Pratap ki kahani’
Or so many many more to chose from. This all stopped when I was
about 9 or 10, but then the stories are still there in the back of my head
somewhere. Because bits and pieces of nothing keep triggering these memories. A
while back, i came to know that the Bhopal airport is called the Raja Bhoj
airport and that sent me back to the exploits of Raja Bhoja. An incredible man,
among whose many achievements is the beautiful city of Bhopal; and yet in our
lovely NCERT school books, I don’t think even a single page is dedicated to
him. But I have him from my stories. Same as with Sheik Chilli, Birbal and countless
other characters, who would be all but lost except for the lovely tradition of
story-telling. That is how I know my Ramayana, Mahabharata. That is how I know
countless things.
This is where my love of history comes from. This is also
where my love for literature comes from. The understanding of our
(in)significance, the understanding of life’s subtle irony, the understanding
of the roundabout nature of things; all this I got from the storytelling. And this
is what I want to be. A story –teller. That is my one burning ambition.
0 comments:
Post a Comment