The origin of Story Telling

hi my name is shashank

and i’m an actor i also make music and

films for a living thank you so much to

i am rotha for the invite to speak today

on your subject which is uh

or your theme which is a my read of of

mo’s

it’s my pleasure to speak to students um

firstly i just want to

begin by saying it’s been a difficult

year for all of us

um 2020 has been perhaps the toughest

year that i

that i’ve lived through in my life so i

hope

the batch of 2020 is holding strong and

i hope you realize that uh

this year uh is perhaps

something that will teach you uh about

life more than

any other year could have and uh i hope

you take it uh

in your stride and uh you realize that

the challenges that have been thrown by

2020 20

will equip you for the rest of your life

and i hope this year has taught us

empathy

and sensitivity and reminded us that

life is short

and that we need to live with compassion

and

love which is the most important thing

so let’s move on to my brief talk today

about storytelling

um let’s

start by the fact that today if you’re

watching this i don’t know where

you’re watching this from if you’re

watching this at home or if you’re

sitting in an auditorium

or you’re at a friend’s place or you’re

watching this on

your phone um no matter where you are

[Music]

[Music]

stories

these are all forms of storytelling and

storytelling is perhaps the most

prevalent of human behaviors that exists

along with eating and

making love and sleeping and so

storytelling is something that exists

all around us in many different forms

and shapes today

and let me

just uh for 20 seconds

[Music]

[Music]

so many different thoughts are going

through everyone’s head while they’re

listening to this song

now this is listening to this tune um

and all these different thoughts are

coming from the people you

are and if perhaps you discuss these

thoughts with the person next to you

you will find that even though

you are very different people with very

different experiences

there will be a certain commonality in

the thoughts you had when you were

listening to this song

and that commonality is uh people and

emotions and places

so um in a nutshell what i am trying to

say

is that stories uh have taken on so many

different forms and effects these days

uh that it’s easier for us to feel

divided uh by stories more than united

um storytelling exists in in

kathakali and opera in north theater

from japan

in russian theater in

hollywood musicals in karnatakas

in delhi in in so many films in dances

in in sculpture in painting in

literature of course

these are all different mediums through

which we tell stories

and it’s easy to get lost in all these

mediums and it’s easy to find

our niche and something we like and it’s

easy to

uh separate ourselves from another

person

in our choice of of preferred choice of

storytelling

uh but um

i want to go into the origin of

storytelling just for

a minute um to perhaps uh

challenge this sense of division we feel

when we listen to stories sometimes and

these days stories are being told to us

sometimes to divide us

storytelling is also being used as a

tool to divide people

and unfortunately we need to identify

that as fast as we can

and you being students you are the

future of

our planet and uh there is nobody better

than you to fight this fight

of trying to unite the world and so

um i want to go back a thousand years

um i want to go back to our religious

texts

to uh to the greek myths to uh

chinese folklore um so if we um

we look at these texts so we find

of course apart from the obvious

cultural differences

uh and the geographical differences and

the differences in language

and phonetics we find that perhaps there

are more similarities

than differences uh a lot of the myths a

lot of religious scriptures a lot of

the epics as we call them a lot of them

are about kings

a lot of them about lovers a lot of them

about families being broken

a lot of them are about uh living a

peaceful life a lot of them are about

uh our relationship with animals our

relationship with

nature um so our stories

uh in a nutshell even though they’re

very different from each other

um they do carry the same

emotional parameters because the people

who are telling these stories are human

beings

and so let’s dive a little further back

um

to a few thousand years before these

uh stories came to be uh

that we call the greek myths or the

greek tragedies or the chinese folklore

um let’s go back uh uh

many thousands of years before that

we as a species uh

came up with storytelling not as a

medium to entertain each other

or to educate each other or to

show our craft as much as storytelling

was a survival mechanism

so imagine with me if

let’s go back 40 000 years ago and we’re

living in a cave

we’re all together in one cave and

two people from our cave go to collect

fruits

and only one comes back to the cave

later at night

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there would be no way for that one

person to explain to the whole tribe

what happened to the other person unless

he tells

them a story of what happened unless he

or she

tells the tribe that we crossed the

river

and across the river there was a bear

and the bear attacked

my friend and my friend was killed

and i ran because i was scared and i

came back to the cave

unless i tell this to my tribe my tribe

has no way of knowing

if i killed my friend or what happened

or where the danger lies or where the

food lies

so storytelling was a way for us to

communicate to one another

simple events storytelling is a way for

us to make

sense of the world around us and

i find comfort in the fact that this

gives us a common origin

to storytelling around the world and

what this explains to us is that human

beings can only relate to

events in a certain way with love with

anger with

jealousy with sadness

and so um eventually these stories

they moved from an oral tradition to uh

cave paintings like the french cave

paintings from 30 000 years ago

to carvings on stone uh to dies

on on a cloth made from animals

to theater and poetry

to uh literature with incon on papyrus

to a cinema and when social media came

to the internet stuff like tweets and

insta stories and uh of course our books

and

our literature so even though

storytelling

took on so many so many different forms

and mediums

along this thousand thousand thousand

thousand year old journey it’s easy for

us to feel

segregated by the stories and the story

telling themselves it’s easy for us to

find differences

within one another but it’s very

important for us to know

why we started telling stories and

why we started telling stories was to

understand one another

and that should highlight to us the fact

that we are not very different from one

another

um our stories are always about the same

things

irrespective of where we are from if

you’re a kid born in russia

and you watch and a bollywood film on

mute it still affects you

it still affects your feelings if you’re

from india and you watch

an american a hollywood film tomorrow

you still relate to that or if you read

a piece of poetry written by an

australian author

that poetry still affects you or

if you watch a dance

from latin america

like this you know like the salsa that

dance still affects you you still feel

moved

so um it’s

it’s very important for us to realize as

people that we are not very different

from one another even though we come in

many different shapes form sizes and

colors

storytelling itself is uh is proof

of the fact that human beings originated

in

a common circumstance that human beings

go through very similar um

mindsets that human beings experience

uh very similar feelings um

so in these days in today’s time um i

think it’s been 10 minutes

since i’ve been talking uh i just want

to

highlight the fact that no matter where

you’re from

no matter who you are and what your name

is and what your parents do or

what you like and what you don’t like

you and the person in front of you

share much more in common than than you

can anticipate

and

i think that is something we as human

beings need to uh

carry with us for the rest of our lives

um and that for us solves many a

conundrum

and that’s all surah’s many a moral

problem and

storytelling is the origin of

storytelling is a subject that

experts are very divided on because like

the origin of language

it requires a very layered approach but

what we do know like i told you

is that we perhaps share a common origin

and uh

i hope those commonalities they affect

us much more than our differences and i

hope we respect our differences

and acknowledge our commonalities and uh

i hope we can make this a a better world