Stories are therapeutic: Paro

Minna Zutshi

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Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, October 12

With 26 books to her credit, writer Paro Anand instinctively knows what a story is. “Sometimes you have to chase a story as it flits just out of reach…But sometimes a story will come for you, grab you by the throat, shake you out of deepest slumber, demanding to be written…” Sometimes, the story-telling session itself is a story waiting to unfold.

In one such story-telling session with the children from Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir, Paro found young voices distinctly uncomfortable with made-up stories. Despite showing visible signs of having enjoyed the story session, the children automatically attached a value judgement – a story that is not true is a lie and a lie is bad.

A Kashmiri boy said the story of bear’s moon adventures cannot be a true story. And if it is not a true story, it is a lie and a lie is bad. The response startled Paro. She asked the children to go home and identify the things that are more than 50 years old. Their task was to find everything about these things.

Soon stories of old carpets started evolving – the dialogue between the buyer and the seller, the father’s growing up years and the parents’ engagement – a whole new world of stories opened up. Paro told the children that the old things they had discovered were the bare bones and the children had added some colour to those things and the stories were born!

Narratives keep developing during Paro’s story-telling sessions. While she was conducting a session with the children of animal poachers, she found that these children’s responses were raw, immediate and very physical. A 10-year-old girl, whose parents were in jail and who had not met them for the past three years, almost attached herself to Paro. She wrapped her arms around Paro’s waist during the session.   Stories are therapeutic, believes Paro. Children open up about the issues they would ordinarily not discuss with anyone. After listening to a story on ghost and another one on domestic violence, a girl who was witness to violence in her family started talking about it to Paro. “There is a kernel of me in every story. Though I have led a life of privilege and love, I write out of angst…That comes from the experiences happening around me….I have to be truthful, authentic and brave,” says the author, who is the winner of Sahitya Akademi Award.

Paro was in Ludhiana today to attend the Junoon Festival “Arts at Play” at Delhi Public School.