The Storyteller

Stories stories stories..

What if I tell you my friends called me “storyteller” when we were in 6^th or 7^th grade??

It’s the weirdest thing I have done and experienced. We would sit in a circle in lunch break and I would tell stories, chronicles of my own vivid but naive mind.

A story would go for days as I couldn’t finish it in 30 minutes break and it was impromptu thing. I didn’t know where to end. I stretched it as long as they wanted to hear it. Mostly I would end up leaving one tale open-ended and move to the next one. Another sapling of my imagination. Hence, it earned me the title of the storyteller.

I find it a bit embarrassing now because it’s strange behavior for a kid of that age. I secretly wish they have forgotten those story-telling sessions.

But then on the flip side of this tale, there was me…on the other side of the table… a listener, an absorber.

Throughout my life I had an interesting mix of friends. I had fairly Elastic preferences when it came to making friends. In fact, there weren’t any preferences. I never devised any checklist, any fixed criteria. I never understood but I have seen people pouring out their agony, I have seen them in most vulnerable state when I was nowhere even close to the position they were in.

I have heard stories of wars and migrations, relationships and cooking tips, family problems, bullying and abuse, political opinions and endless survival stories of people who conceal their scars and smile for the world. Or just shut themselves in isolation.

I am the railing on the bridge where people come and hang their own stories and lock them. Then I gladly take the keys from their shivering hands, and swallow them. I have swallowed the keys to thousands of little painful memoirs that still grace the wall of my own subconscious.

And you know what those keys did to me?? No, they didn’t hurt me at all. The moment they entered by system they turned into a light mist of the strongest medicine with earthy sweetness to it. Very organic. Very calming. And merged in my own soul, feeding it. Satisfying it.

I find it hard to talk about myself at times. My personality is divided into a bizarre spectrum. The colours fight for dominance and opposed each other. On the other hand, when you run them through a prism they always give out a unique ray of light. Unusual … unexplainable…

The reason?? Stories. Gazillion of star colluding to brighten my sky.

I always admired night sky. In childhood when we went out to play, I would stop and look at the sky in awe and watch stars whenever I got a chance. I would memorize and trace their locations.

Whenever I hear a story I add a new star to my sky.

A new firefly is born with the warrior instinct to fight my darkness.

Those stars, keys, little painful memoirs, fireflies conspire to end my own gloom and add vivacity to my own existing light.

That’s the power of listening and sharing. And power of being there for people when they feel the urge to talk.

It’s our own catharsis.

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