Breathing Jeeva into stories

Once upon a time, there was a grandmother. Her name was Sarathambal but the children who gathered around her at mealtimes didn’t know this. She was just Thotha Paati, beloved paati . The children would be hungry for the little balls of lemon rice or thayir sadam topped with mango pickle that she would drop into their hands, one by one, going round and round in the semi-circle in which they sat before her. But they were hungrier still for something else. Her stories.

“Thotha paati was my inspiration,” says Jeeva. “I was enthralled by her.”

As children today are enthralled by Jeeva herself in Chennai, Madurai, Pune, Goa, England, Seattle, Singapore, Sweden, Malaysia... You have to see it to believe it — the delight that plays on their faces as she launches into her storytelling sessions with an “Ohhho!” or an “Aahhha!” and urges them to join in.

For 15 years now, Jeeva Raghunath has been telling stories in Tamil and English. She has been invited to innumerable international storytelling festivals, from Cayman Islands to Kenya, with Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia inviting her again and again.

The youngest child of film director T.R. Raghunath and actress M.S. Saroja, she was a chatterbox from the time she could talk. School friends at Chennai’s Vidyodaya recall there was always a crowd around her, listening goggle-eyed as she spun tale after tall tale.

Then came college and after that, life. She taught preschoolers, she taught French, she found love, she hunted down school and college mates. That’s how she met up with Radhika, who had set up a brave little company publishing books for children. “Tulika needs someone like Jeeva,” she thought and made her its marketing manager. Truth to tell, though, it wasn’t her cup of coffee or tea — she drinks neither. However, one day, Radhika, who remembered all those prattling performances from school, decided Jeeva would tell the story of Priya’s Day , a book by storyteller Cathy Spagnoli, at its launch function.

Jeeva got into the act: her sparkling eyes and easy style and musical interludes made the event such a hit, books flew off the shelf, the ink hardly dry on the pages. Now Jeeva knew where her destiny lay and her journey began.

It wasn’t easy. No one was ready to pay to listen to stories — although they didn’t mind blowing up a packet at the movies. Besides, she had lots to learn about a lot. Then she went to the Asian Storytelling Festival in Singapore. There, she took audiences by storm. She visited schools and discovered a network of storytellers. There, her life changed. So much that former president S.R. Nathan’s wife hailed her as the “icon of Singapore”!

“She must be the best storyteller in India,” feels Swati Roy, owner of Eureka bookstore in New Delhi. “And she certainly ranks with the best in the world.” She’s going entirely by the reactions of children who attend Bookaroo children’s literature festival, of which she is co-founder. “She is flawless. A lot of times, storytellers have a certain style, and that comes through in the telling. With her, it’s different. Body language, modulations... everything changes depending on the story. Also, she talks to the child. She makes eye contact. Each one feels, ‘She’s telling the story for me’.”

Unforgettable

Now, imagine a large hall, the size of three basketball courts, jam-packed with children aged between five and eight. How do you make eye contact in such a setting? But she does. The children at Delhi Public School in Srinagar will never forget her. One child in Patna told her: “You’re the GREATEST storyteller in the world!”

She is certainly audacious. How else could she be planning to set up a call centre of storytellers to connect the world with stories and make it a global business? “Any takers? You’re welcome to partner,” she says. “People who want to listen can just call, listen, pay and be happy. Maybe it will be respected more as a skill than it is today as an art!”

Those words hide pain — the struggle, physical exhaustion, losing loved ones, having to prove yourself time and again despite the evidence of children’s enchantment, fighting to find acceptance for spoken Tamil as against the forbidding formality of the written language, scraping to pay the rent, going to bed hungry, being alone even while entertaining hundreds...

But Jeeva’s not one to wallow. She finds strength in her stories. She has learned from her travels and interactions with professional storytellers from other countries. People such as Diane Ferlatte and Cathy generously shared their experiences and insights and were, in turn, mesmerised by the energy of her telling. Friends have stood by her. Her nieces and nephews are her first fans.

Janaki Galappatti, former director of the children’s programme of the Galle Literary Festival, Sri Lanka, recalls: “I watched Jeeva conduct a workshop for teachers of English in Jaffna, demonstrating to them the use of storytelling in language instruction. She threw herself into the storytelling, using not only her verbal skills but body language as well, creating a compelling performance that held the teachers completely wrapped up in the simple children’s stories she related. The workshop was held in the afternoon after a long working day for the teachers, but no one fell asleep.”

A true miracle

Swedish writer Eva Swedenmark talks about the time “we had a meeting in Chennai with lots and lots of children and I was supposed to read a translation from one of my books. It was in English and I did not feel comfortable though the children gave me polite applause. But then, Jeeva took my text and told it to them in Tamil. I could not understand but I was fascinated, the children as well. I wish my story was as exciting as when Jeeva told it with her voice, her body, her hands, her face so full of expressions. A true miracle.”

The key to Jeeva’s storytelling is joy. Which is why corporates too invite her to perform and conduct workshops for employees. “They look to storytelling as a means of busting stress, team-building, marketing, and helping participants develop presentation and communication skills,” says Jeeva. And they have the budget. “Some organisations are willing to spend a minimum of Rs 25,000 a day for a workshop,” she says. Or even Rs 5,000 a head for a three-hour workshop.

There was a time schools wanted everything free. Today, they clamour to have Jeeva over, to just be with them as looooong as possible.

So, I’m going to ask the editor to invite Jeeva to our newsroom one afternoon. After all, what’s journalism but telling stories, true stories.

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