TARUN'S TALE

"Stories should be like a breath of fresh air. They should give strength to our souls," Tarun's grandmother told him...

- Sachin Sharma

Tarun went to the community park with his grandmother every day. Sitting on the park bench, knitting woolly sweaters, his grandmother told him stories of Lord Rama, the great archer Arjuna, the noble Karna, the seven dwarfs, djinns and the flying carpet.

To him, his grandmother was like a mystery. At home, she seemed like an ordinary woman who read the newspaper and fed him, but as soon as she reached the park, she transformed into a magician, weaving a new story with her magical yarn every day. No one knew where these stories came from.

Tarun loved milk cake. Whenever his father visited home in their small town after spending months working in the city, he always brought a box of milk cake for Tarun.

Tarun lay on the bed with milk cake in his mouth, thinking about the last story that was left unfinished.

The next day, his grandmother told him a new story, 'The Tale of the Magic Lamp.' Tarun was captivated by this story and decided to narrate it at the annual school function. He asked his grandmother to repeat the story daily so that he could write it down and memorise it, but there was a problem.

Every time his grandmother narrated the story, she would make changes-sometimes altering the character names, sometimes starting a new story midway. Frustrated, Tarun would correct her mistakes in his notebook and would be scolded by his grandmother, who claimed that those details were not part of the original story.

When he couldn't bear it any longer, he exclaimed, "Leave it, Dadi!"

She sensed his disappointment. Coming closer, she placed her hand on his cheek and said, "My dear boy, what difference does the character's name make in the story? The essence lies with the narrator. If you narrate it, the story will be yours. But there must be passion in the storytelling. If you narrate it in a dull way, it won't be enjoyable." Like many of his grandmother's sayings, this too puzzled him.