Story Time

 

 
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Here is my reason for not bringing you stories of my Navarathri. I was telling them!!

Got to do both the stories this Navarathri at the same activity centre.
Mahishasuramardini, this time was accompanied by some music and a cute introduction with my friend and favourite puppet; Sukhi.
You know that makes me wonder why I have never told you about my pal Sukhi...I will surely dedicate one post to him...watch out for it!

But the craziness was in preparing a story in 2 days. I had to plan and make my visuals(props) for Ramayana in that time. I tell you it was crazy. Where to begin, and how to make it worth listening to?
Most Indian children have all the facts of the story, so I knew it has to be something different and interactive and fun.
So we made a bridge!
The Vanara Sena or Monkey brigade with their monkey masks( yes I made that too from scratch!), made stones and boulders with newspaper and then constructed a bridge on the ocean( a blue Dupatta), and finally having reached Lanka, vanquished Raavan with bows and arrows!
If you notice in the photograph, there are some faces on sticks lying beside Raavan, well those are his heads. 10 children held those heads on sticks, and succumbed to the arrows shot at them. The final arrow was then shot at his navel, and the children went off, holding their masks and thrilled to bits at having defeated Raavan!

It was an amazing time for me. As I understood how much I could push myself if I wanted to. Yet as I am not very artistic, I think it takes me more time and effort to draw and cut out my characters.

Its a great feeling to make an experience out of a story for a child or for that matter an adult too.

Comments

  1. Anuradha ShankarOctober 17, 2010 at 8:07 PM

    This is awesome!! if u were here, I would send samhith off to you for such wonderful story sessions.... i can tell a story well, but am no good at all with props and stuff..,cant even think of any.. in fact, just the week before navaratri, samhith had a storytelling competition in school, and we had a hard time deciding which story to tell, and once we decided (the three types of listening - the 3 dolls), i had no idea about how to go about all the props...making them was all right, but how to use them??? and with navaratri coming up, we had no time, so the poor chap went and told the story by himself! shall pick up some tips from you next time!

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