On this 10th Week: under the theme Reading & Expression

 We are conducting a story telling workshop in which we will learn how stories are told, and a confluence of stories. Today, we have stories from Adi, Assamese, Bengali, Chakma Garo, Khasi, Kheza, Koch rajbongshi, and Manipuri to celebrate this event. The stories which our students have taken up mainly revolve around different folktales, told in different languages.We will explore what folktales mean to the people and which cultural tradition it carries forward.

Why this event?

Folktales are clear manifestations of the ways of life, culture and traditions. Folktales are imaginative, interesting, and full of wit and wisdom, all mixed in with literary flavour.

In its simplest form folktales are a traditional oral prose narrative, which are meant to be told and retold, and are used to pass on wisdom in an allegorical and symbolic form. One of the most important features of folktales is its ability to be rewritten, revised, and recreated. No one knows who actually started telling these stories, yet the essence, the moral and the cultural value attached to them remain. As a characteristic, folktales set up a fundamental human contrast between polarities such as good and evil, industry and sloth, intelligence and stupidity. Many folktales talk about the origin of cultural practices, the way taboos are observed, explaining specific habits of various animals, the relation between animals, plants and humans, etc. Folktales serves as a foundation of moral values, ethics and wisdom thereby providing us with the ability to feel and to be human by providing a moral lesson.While told to children they see amusement, fascination and the lure of enjoyment created by magic and imaginary things, supernatural beings, foolish characters and wise characters, and the unthinkable worlds available in plenty in the folktales.At the same time it serves as a means through which they understand the relationship with fellow people and the surrounding, the plants and the animals etc.

The use of folktales enhances the cognitive ability and rhetorical reasoning skills. They can be used to explore personal, psychological, emotional, social and cultural truths. Many folktales deal with permanent truths and universal values, and they provide an imaginary context and reference that can have a lifelong impact.

Folktales provide a foundation for children to understand their existence by providing a variety of environments, conflicts and characters which they can relate to. Folktales also help children find a way to look at culture from the inside out, they serve as a therapeutic function, and helps to develop a framework for an individual belief system. It is a powerful invitation into the potential understanding of the culture. It can be read as entrances into a more critical understanding of the socio-cultural surroundings. Since Folktales focuses on universal human realities the genre is capable of transcending cultural barriers, they bring harmony in the young minds of the children. It also helps one in recreating and recognizing events in life.

The North East is full of stories, explaining thousands of natural phenomena and explaining the observed behaviour that imbue a sense of order. Folktales also remind the communities that it is important to keep our obligations, the reasons for which are contained in the stories. These obligations are a way of life, it forms the basis of our social behaviour, the basis for the ceremonies, the rituals and customs we follow, the environment we live in, etc. Listening to the universal human values, customs and traditions in this region will be an enriching experience for all of us, let’s explore what is in store for us today.