While commuting in the bus me and Ishani a dear little friend of mine from PP II, both of us together use to spend lot of time playing some little- little self created games. She use to make me a very small and weak animal and she use to become a strong animal like an elephant or a tiger, the later being her favourite and she always pretended being the strong one. She gave all the reasons to dominate me the weaker one, but I always use to give her some challenges by proving that even the weaker can be stronger if they use their brain. This use to trouble her little, as it was difficult for her to accept that, being physically weak how can one dominate the physically strong one. This went on for quite some time and gradually the form of this game changed.
Ishani insisted that we should play story-story so I started composing some small on spot stories for her. To make it more interesting for her I included her family members as characters in the story along with a list of her favourite animals. What I loved the most while doing so was her exciting facial expressions and specially the glitter in her eyes.
After some time I made it a two way task that, one story I’ll tell and one story she will tell so it became a fifty-fifty deal between the two of us. She started giving me the choice of the characters like this story should have my mummy and my brother and giraffe, elephant, tiger and so on……….. so the story use to be of her choice of characters.
Gradually I also started giving her characters of my choice and she was to build the plot of the story around those characters. Initially she found it difficult but kept attempting the same. During this duration I could see her developing the art of story-telling she use to get fully engrossed and lost in her own story world.
One day it so happened that I was telling a self composed story of A Hungry Caterpillar to Ishani. The other two three children of the bus, Nikhil Prakhar and Dhruv of grade three also joined in the story session in the bus.And that day something very interesting happened, to get the actual feel of the incidence I think one must know the story also in brief so here is the story-
The title of the story was ,’The Giant Caterpillar’
One day Ishani was peeling green peas with her mother and she saw a small caterpillar in the pea pod, Ishani asked the caterpillar what are you doing inside the pea pod than the caterpillar said I’m very hungry and so eating the sweet peas Ishani said will you be my friend I’ll give you lot of eatables and I’ll give you a name too. Ishani called her Greeny as she was fond of eating green green food.
She gave her lots of fresh, green and crunchy leaves so the whole day the caterpillar kept eating and eating and eating and she grew big in size. Greeny’s hunger kept growing and growing when Ishani could not feed her so much so she took her to the garden near her house and Greeny kept eating and eating and the leaves from the garden also finished then she grew bigger and bigger in size. Ishani thought now she cannot stay in the city so she took her to the Jungle there also she kept eating and eating and eating and she grew Giant in size now when no leaves were left in the jungle too she started eating the animals when I reached this stage of story Prkhar jumped in and said, ”Can I add something interesting from my side and then he said, “let him eat as much as he want and suddenly his stomach will blast and all the animals and plants will be saved”, I said that’s a good idea then I continued the story saying he kept eating and eating and eating and suddenly his stomach was about to blast and Dhruv interrupted saying in Hindi,” Par maa’m Greeny beech mein fresh hone bhi to ja sakta tha phir kum se kum uska stomach burst hone so to bach jaata, and I had no words I could just smile because only these innocent kids can think of such ideas which we as adults can never imagine. This is how I feel we can help nurture their thought process this even strengthens my belief in freedom of speech and expression which we give to our children rather than to ask them keeping quiet most of the time.
I also feel very good when I see Ishani also developing as a young story teller who completely gets engrossed in to story while narrating them and her voice modulation is worth seeing.
So this write up of mine is a salute to these young and innovative minds which, makes us dive deep to know the beauty secrets of childhood.
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