Its Story Time!

It was when I was put in charge of my niece and nephews , I realised how difficult it was to baby-sit! I had to keep them occupied throughout the day to avoid any “unintended disaster” in the otherwise calm house.

While they were busy painting rather dirtying the place, I was busy preparing myself for the next big task… Story time! The toughest job… I need to coin a story that meets and caters to every single kid’s taste ! The panel of judges that I have , have the capability to reject the story as soon as I start if they find it boring!

During the process of my research, I found that there different styles of stories and each style has its own targetted audience

#EkthaKapoorstyle

This style has a lot of drama and gives a high dosage of emotions! Your lead character has to go through all possible problems before you wrap up the climax. My mom had used this style to narrate a story about an orphan kid. I used to be almost in tears when she narrates a scene where a bad aunty pushes him away when he asks for food. This story is a massive hit….We Indians are emotional you see  Tip: The introduction of the lead role is highly important and should gain all sympathy votes right in the first scene! My mom starts off like “Avanukku amma vum ilaa… Appa-vum illa… thaatha-vum illa paati-um illa…(Translation: The boy has neither mom nor dad, no grandpa and no grandma…)goes on till all possible realtions are covered”… One word “orphan” wouldn’t have stirred so much emotion 

#TheGaaptainStyle

Vijayakanth fans should have decifered from the name  This style should involve lot of numbers and facts. For Eg: 4 brothers start to a city which is 1000 km away from the village and have to reach within 20 days. They travel first 150km by walk which takes 2 days and so on. You can throw out few questions in between to make a random check on their mathematics skills. Trust me… before you ask the 2nd question they will be asleep  My dad used this technique with me! Tip: Your algebra problem statements can come handy 

#Rajinistyle

This style is best suited if your panel of judges are Homo sapiens with  XY chromosome. It doesn’t require any logic. Every 1 minute there should be a grand-scale fight sequence where the lead should beat up atleast 20 people at one go. He should jump from the flight, run on a moving train, bite a bullet and kill 5 people with the same but still emerge without even a slightest scratch! Tip: Be attentive! When you are busy narrating, there will be a kid busy trying the same with his brother. So put out a warning every now and then “All stunts will be performed ONLY by our story’s hero. Imitation of the same will lead to stopping the story immediately.”

#Grannystyle

This is the safest style. You can pick up any mythological story that has a God factor in it and finish off your work. Tip: This is the only style that allows repetition of same stories. When my Granny starts a story from Ramayan/Mahabharath, we used to shout in chorus “Paaaati… Bore!” My granny with wide eyes remarks “Never say boring to God stories. He will be watching and the person who listens to his story with rapt attention will become His favourite kid” Now tell me which kid would deny that offer 

#Disneystyle

This style is limited only to targeted audience especially if the group has little fairies as its majority. It consists of princess, castles, animals who can speak…In other words a re telecast of Pogo channel 

After all this analysis was done, I sat up ready for the test  I did a bit of last minute prep (habituated you see  ) and went to meet my panel armed with details… ‘So…. Everybody ready for the story time’ I called out with oozing confidence like Arnab ready to fire his set of panelists. I was greeted with a positive ‘Yaaeeeeee’  Getting bit more over confident I asked “So… what story do you want today?” I realised it was a very wrong question as soon as my nephew shouted “I want a new story… Something about my galaxy Tab” I cursed my sis for making them techfreaks.

My brain scrolled through the style list and coined one of its own

#Aishu’s style

This is the combination of all the above styles and targetted for the techfreak nephews like mine. As in Rajini style the lead role does all heroic stunts. Then a bit of ektha kapoor style to add emotions.Of course Gaaptain and Disney too. One difference is the lead character is …. Tadaaaa!… Presenting our hero Android who fights with malicious software, jumps firewalls, retrieves the stolen data and finally emerges successful