Excellence in teaching, brilliance in storytelling – Interview with Yeleswarapu Gayathri – Part 2

Could you talk about the Indian heritage of storytelling?

We have a great history of storytelling – the day starts and end with stories being shared with the family. Stories will be narrated to the whole family regardless of people who go out for job and people who stay at home, age and other considerations etc. When the stories are shared, the positive stories are shared and memories of negative stories are cancelled.

We have grown up in a such a world where everything is defined as good and evil. Everything is black and white, good and evil – the third option is not there. In the future, children will come to such a world where they will find it difficult to judge everything as good and bad. And it was also added by Sir at the end of the PPAI course, “Don’t teach children only about good and bad.” I like this and support this in all my work.

We have grown up in this world accepting the fact that there are only two things opposite to each other like good or bad Black or White but we must be ready to accept that are also something’s beyond good, bad like there is a stage called normal which is not good and also which is not bad. Through story telling we can prove some of the facts that won’t exist at all like “Doing nothing is also normal and ok if it’s not going to harm anyone”.

Can you talk about your use of music in storytelling?

Music is great. I won’t be able to start a day without music. I am doing my youtube channel only for the music.

Could you talk about your storytelling style?

I want that children should pass on their stories to others. My style consists of music, instruments and voice modulation. People do rely on content. We must be able to create each other’s every day.

Could you talk about why you would encourage others to take up storytelling?

Story telling is not like any other art like painting or drawing to be sit and  learnt and then implement it later but it should be learnt practically.. it means lot of focus patience and accepting reality…

We must have the ability make  people to travel through different worlds from their sitting room. We are living in the world of beliefs that Lord Krishna or Lord Rama lived like that so we also should be like that…which we learnt from their stories the mankind evolved….

It’s like

 If you have great responsibility on changing the world and people

Keep going with story telling…

Make people believe your words such that the next moment, next day of their life starts with your words. The legacy of storytelling from Harikatha to Movie whether a short story or series of novel. We must make a move towards blending technology with storytelling and teach the next generation about Harikatha, Tholubommalata, our traditional arts and bring back the Art form of India.