Story-telling gone with the wind

Story-telling... now no more

- BY R.S. KARUNARATNE [e-mail]

As a child I always wanted to listen to a story.

However, most of the elderly people I knew were not so good at telling stories. One day I found a tramp at the doorstep asking for a morsel of food. When my mother offered him something to eat, I asked him whether he could tell me a story. Then he settled down under a tree. Some of my friends, too, flocked around him. He looked at us lovingly and told the following story.

"A long time ago, I was spending my New Year holidays with my eldest daughter and her kids. While we were chatting at night a sudden storm started blowing and the kuppi lampuva (bottle lamp) was nowhere to be seen. We couldn't see anything or anyone in the house. The kids started crying. As there was nothing else to do, I narrated a story. One day when I was living alone in my house, I heard a crash in the attic. Everybody was shocked. I told the kids that I would go in and investigate. To my horror I found a baby elephant in the attic. It was trying to read some of my old books kept there."

"The storm was still raging and the kids were eager to know what happened to the elephant in the attic. We stayed huddled together for some time. After a while, the stormy weather subsided and the kids heaved a sigh of relief. "What happened to the little jumbo?" a kid asked. The little jumbo had disappeared when the bottle lamp was lit."

Imagination