The art of story telling

Sitting in the small café over a cup of coffee, I was observing the drops of rain that happily lost their identity to associate with the stream whose existence is as volatile as the rain itself. In this hot summer, the feel of the coffee mug in the hand still gave soothing warmth. I wanted to write something albeit I didn’t want to write on the subjects I had from a long time. I haven’t assigned myself a must do duty for jotting down one or other thing every day. It is just like a whiff of air that will eventually pass and will revisit me in the days to come. I want to weave beautiful thoughts that would soothe the readers but I end up entangled in the mess. In times of leisure, I have the privilege of running wild into the internet, bumping over different blogs, news and articles. Most of the blogs that I have ended falling for are not different than what I have read, heard or experienced but it is the story telling that took me by spell. Whether it’s the account of an argument between the author and his/her friends, or it’s just an account of a casual outing the style the interpretation and the tiniest observation has made me feel content. They prove my belief that it’s the tiniest things that we miss to notice, have the most prolific of effect. I believe the proper word for this is the art of story telling. Whether they are movies, novels, articles, journals or poems that I have loved, I have loved the way the story has been told. The first book I fell in love with was Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The old man and the sea’, which is just a struggle of a man in the tumultuous sea. There is no big story but the way the ambience has been created, they come flashing before the eyes. When I read that I could see the movement of the fish in the book itself, I could see the expression of the old man, of the boy and I loved it. Whenever one gets to read a good thing in the beginning he will develop the likings to read more and I consider myself lucky in this aspect. I liked Arundhati Roy’s ‘God of small things’ just because of the portrayal of life, of the kids, smallest incidents in the cinema hall, smallest of the observations that left lasting impact into me. They drenched my soul. A good book does not satiate your hunger to read; in fact it elevates the hunger. I have loved description and the way the author creates a relationship between the event the environment, the way he/she blends the weather, trees, and the sky with the emotions of the character. The Russian novelists do it adeptly and their description of nature is beyond the capacity of the word.
When it comes to movies same thing applies, just few days back I bought home a movie called ‘Bella’, that had the protagonist who was charred in the fire of agony after he mistakenly kills a girl in an accident. His life goes upside down and as the story unfolds he meets the actress and the story journeys through hearty and moving minutes touching the soul. ‘Taare Zameen Par’ a movie on a dyslexic child though was a unique item in the menu, it’s the story telling that did the magic. The title track and the ‘Maa’ songs which had all eyes moist. The art book, the close up angle of the mixing colors, the playing with the dogs everything was well observed and well told. Somewhere I remember reading one needs to be a good observer to be a good writer, a good teller.
Stories can be good if one knows how to tell it. A story is mediocre because there was a flaw in the way it was told. While reading blogs I usually stumble upon the posts of Indian bloggers. I don’t know if it’s the proximity of our culture, of our land or of our bringing up I prefer reading Indian blogger’s post more than that of any others. There in their blogs I can see the transition between a developing country into a developed one. I see the transition of a group of people who had always been looked down by their peers who are now rising higher to reach the level of their on lookers.
Rarely I feel contended on what I write, I never find them soothing but do not regret either. Its my way of doing things or probably I am in the process of learning and I miss a large part of tiny moments which would have made me write better. I doubt my observations have been superficial, in spite of billions of written pages there is a myriad of things that can be written and re-written, told and re-told.