STORY TELLING

Last week I sat before the idol of Lord Ganesh – one that was made of clay – to perform Ganesh puja. As I started looking at the idol, I was amazed at the features of the idol – the sharp eyes, large head, small mouth and large ears et al. I recalled, with amusement, the number of stories that I had heard about Lord Ganesh. I instantly admired our forefathers who were great story tellers – who wove facts, fiction and spun stories with lot of inbuilt symbolism so that we remember them forever. The fact we regale children with such colorful stories even today, after aeons, is quite remarkable.

Looking again at Lord Ganesh I wondered at the symbolism embedded. The large head symbolizes his enormous wisdom and the large ears – quite obviously because he has an elephant head – indicating that we need to listen more and be very attentive and correspondingly a small mouth, perhaps signifying that we need to talk less! One of his tusks is broken reminding us to retain the good and discard the bad and also representing that sacrifice is necessary for learning and gaining wisdom. His small eyes ask you to concentrate and focus on your goals. His large trunk represents the discrimination and the ability to discern between good and the evil. In modern parlance perhaps it signifies flexibility and adaptability! His large stomach conceivably contains all things the known and unknown universes or possibly indicative of the fact that we need to digest the good and the evil! Funny enough, a mouse is supposed to be his “vahana” or vehicle. The rationalists may taunt at such an impossibility but again remember all this is symbolic and allegorical – it symbolizes all our desires. Just as a mouse is restless and keeps running all over the place, our desires run amok and if we are to be at peace with ourselves and the world, we need to keep this under control! I can go on and on – but I guess you get the drift.

Stories about Lord Ganesh abound and who can forget his ingenious move of going round his parents thrice and claiming the coveted mango fruit? Lord Ganesh came to my rescue once – albeit in unusual circumstances. I was in an overseas location to attend a difficult project meeting with the client (who said project meetings with clients were fun?). I had to defend some bad deliveries from our side. We introduced ourselves and one of the clients asked me “what does Ganesh mean?” That was my chance and I immediately replied “It means remover of all obstacles and I am here to remove all the obstacles in solving your project issues!”  Most of them at least had a smile and the meeting, needless to say, went off much better than what I had anticipated.

Like I said, our forefathers were great story tellers – I love to watch Mahabharata on TV even now. It is still fascinating and several people have written different interpretations of that epic. A modern story teller like Craig Jenkins says Epics are holistic depictions of life – and continues that stories in The Ramayana and The Mahabharata are metaphors and allow us to raise questions! However, have we now lost that art of storytelling?  Is it meant only for grandmothers to narrate stories to their grand children? I don’t think so.

Robert McKee in a HBR article entitled “Story Telling that works” says “Trying to convince people with logic is tough for two reasons. One is they are arguing with you in their heads while you are making your argument. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.” Recent studies have empirically shown that people’s beliefs can be swayed more effectively through storytelling than through logical arguments. The researchers say that persuasion is most effective when people are "transported" to another place using a story. And corporate world is getting onto this bandwagon in a big way. Our forefathers knew this all along. So if you are not a good story teller, start right away!

And coming back to our Lord Ganesh, after completion of the celebrations, I was saddened to bid him farewell. It was no ordinary farewell for I will be immersing him and losing him. But again on second thoughts, I marveled at the symbolism of this whole ritual. The idol that was worshipped as GOD the previous day is completely dissolved – maybe it signifies that this entire creation is nothing but names and forms behind which there is an unchanging essence. The names and forms are ephemeral and we need to transcend these and look for that unchanging reality.

What is that unchanging essence?