Storyteller Geeta Ramanujam’s Kathalaya turns 25!

A man with a long, silver beard sat on a little settee in the corner of a children’s library in Tokyo, Japan. The man introduced himself to Geeta Ramanujam as Kato Sensei, a lexicographer from Tokyo. Geeta told him she was a storyteller from India. “Would you like to hear a gripping story?” asked Kato, gently stroking his silver beard, and Geeta welcomed his tale about the huge mountain, Tojin Mura, along the rocky coast of North-east Japan. 

“I have travelled to the nooks and crannies of India and abroad to import, exchange and share stories with tellers. Most of the stories in my book, Tales from around the World (Puffin Books) are those that I have heard from people,” says Geeta, who has collected 20 stories from around the world in this book illustrated by Arkapriya Koley.

Geeta set up the Bengaluru-based Kathalaya — the House of Stories and pioneered a movement in India using stories as an educational and communication tool. She has travelled to 43 countries and 27 States in India to train storytellers professionally for the last 40 years. She established the training wing of Kathalaya, the International Academy of Storytelling, to hone storytelling skills through certified courses.

Kathalaya is celebrating its silver jubilee with Kathotsava 25, with a Katha Jamboree from October 28 to December 10, in school libraries, museums, bookstores and storytelling spaces in 15 states across India.

The story bug had already bitter her by the time Geeta was teaching Social Studies and English and a librarian in 1980. She used stories to tweak her teaching methodologies, and make concepts interesting.

A seed starts to sprout

Once upon a time on a regular school morning, the skies opened up and the rain came bucketing down. Three teachers including Geeta hurried to a banyan tree for shelter. The cloudburst was enough for Geeta and her colleagues to reminisce on their childhood memories of rain.

They noticed a caterpillar and started discussing its process of transformation into a butterfly. Geeta wondered how she could build stories on the life cycle of a butterfly and weave into her teaching, even as the other two teachers pitched in, making Geeta realise the larger role of sharing stories as an art form.

The incident led to Geeta creating a module around storytelling. “The art has been adopted by corporates, with HR professionals attending storytelling workshops to develop effective communication skills for presentations,” says Geeta, who has trained nearly a lakh adults and five lakh children so far.

As a teacher, Geeta regularly incorporated stories in her lessons, making her classes quite popular. “I would take my students out on learning experiences, accompany them to radio stations to listen to interviews and leave them free to play in the parks, climb trees or give them nature observation workshops and discussion exercises. Many criticized my style of teaching and even complained that it wasn’t right.”

“What discouraged me was the school’s decision to remove me as a teacher and appoint me as librarian. Just when I thought of quitting, I remembered my father’s advice, ‘Never react to anything, respond to it. Everything happens for a reason’.”

Geeta resolved to continue as a librarian, and when she saw children bored she would narrate a story from the books in the library. She would stop her storytelling midway to prompt the children to read to know the conclusion.

A parent once told her, “Engaging children this way is simple and useful. Why don’t you conduct a workshop in the city?” This proved to be another turning point and she held her first ‘Storytelling Workshop’ in 1996. Newspaper reports of this workshop resulted in numerous phone calls requesting teacher-workshops, propelling Geeta on to a whole new realm of possibilities.

Geeta, with a Masters degree in Education and another in Economics, released her first book, The Wise Monkey and Other Animal Stories in 2002, in response to the demand from audiences.

Before the beginning

Independent India was rebuilding itself and people migrated to cities in search of greener pastures and employment. Families were becoming nuclear units. “My father too, was part of this movement, he came to Bombay in search of better prospects. My mother who hailed from Thanjavur had grown up on a rich diet of stories, and as a child growing up in the late 1950s, I listened to folk tales from my mother, while my father added his share from history and legends. I was taken to discourses, movie houses, theatre, dance and music performances and before I knew it, I could mimic people and cartoon characters.”

Kathalaya International Academy of Storytelling 

When her professional storytelling and training of teachers began, Geeta had already had over 20 years of experience in teaching. Gradually, it set her thinking on equipping adults and starting an academy to train people in the art of storytelling. The path had to be etched from scratch, but again things fell into place in the most unlikely manner.

“In 2003, destiny again stepped in,” Geeta says. “I was in America for a wedding, when the International Storytelling Festival was taking place. An chance meeting with Peggy Bulger, director of the American Folklife Center, put me in touch with Jimmy Neil Smith, founder and president emeritus of the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee, who invited me to the festival.”

Neil helped Geeta with an affiliation to start an academy to train people in the art of storytelling in India, which would go on to train nearly 200 batches online. “He also helped me organise the first International Storytelling Festival in India in 2005, which made it to the Limca Book of Records.”

Geeta went on to bag many honours for her accomplishments — the Ashoka Fellowship Award from the USA — among them. Records show she has trained 98,491 people through this art that has impacted over 10 lakh people around the globe.

(Kathotsava 25, Kathalaya’s programme is on till December 10. For details visit www.kathalaya.org)