PEOPLE
The People Who Put Stories in My Hands
Teachers, grandparents, storytellers and everyday heroes.
Scroll to exploreA STORYTELLER PIECE
Before I knew the word history, before I understood mythology, philosophy, dynasties or epics, I knew Amar Chitra Katha.
They came to me as slim comic books filled with extraordinary people.
Kings and queens. Poets and saints. Warriors and wanderers. Gods, goddesses, rebels, thinkers and children.
I would open one, and suddenly another world was waiting.
A palace corridor. A forest hermitage. A battlefield. A temple town.
A new world in every page.
A story that had travelled for hundreds — sometimes thousands — of years, now sitting quietly in my hands.
But somewhere between those illustrated panels, they were also teaching me how to look at India — not as one single story, but as thousands of stories layered upon one another.
Perhaps that is why I still collect them.
The child who once reached eagerly for the next Amar Chitra Katha has never completely disappeared.
And now, when I arrange dolls on Golu steps, build a tiny world, or wonder how to tell an old story in a new way, I recognize something familiar.
Take a story you have inherited. Hold it carefully. Make it visible. Then place it into someone else’s hands. That is what storytellers do.
And sometimes, we become storytellers because someone once gave us a story first.
A question to carry with you
Who first made the stories of your world come alive?
