I Have a Story

… I have a story

Monday, August 19, 2013

The Dream

The Dream

The Kathakamamishu team has been eagerly waiting to interact with children and tell them stories. We finally got confirmation from the Madras Cancer Institute that we could do our storytelling session with the children of their Pediatric Ward.

We entered their campus in the morning and walked in with high hopes and butterflies in our stomachs , wondering how these children would respond and as to how they would like the session. We were warmly welcomed by Dr.Subhathra of the Pediatric ward. We walked through long corridors with patients on either side waiting for treatment or to be called by Doctors for their review. We then went into the newly built bright building - Mahesh Memorial Pediatric ward, built in memory of Mr.Mahesh Mahadevan.

We walked into the brightly lit Art & Crafts room and there our dreams started to materialize! on Aug 10th 2013 :)


Hurray!!! Kathakamamishu debuts with storytelling for the Children of the Pediatric Ward at the Madras Cancer Institute

Kathakamamishu is founded by Lavanya Srinivas (seasoned story teller, children's educator and translator of many children's books) and stories are narrated by Lavanya Srinivas and Lakshmi Narasimhan(Management professional and writes under pseudonym : Elle N - author of stories for children)

About the storytelling session - as recorded on Aug 10th 2013 by Elle N

The session went off well. It was a 45 min story telling session at the Madras Cancer Institute - Pediatric Ward today. 

The idea :
It was initiated with the World Story Telling Institute (Eric Miller) and partnered by Kathakamamishu
The idea of the administrator was to engage the children during the time they visit the doctors, have their dressing and wait for tests to be conducted. They have volunteers coming through the week - 3 days a week for montessory teaching, 2 days a week - maths teaching, 2 days a week of art and craft and one day of just fun with volunteers from various colleges. This was their first experiment with story telling and they wanted to know how it works with the patients. They try to engage them for about 2 hours everyday and they wanted to try out story telling. They are not yet sure as to whether they want it on a permanent basis. 

Children: 
Whilst there are many children in the pediatric ward, about 10 to 15 of them were able to attend this session today. Most of the children who attended were in the 4 to 8 year age group although there were children from 2 years onwards and about 15 years as well. 

The place: It was a bright and sunny room usually allotted for art and craft and it was nicely done with the patients art works and bright flowers and butterflies

How we did it:
Doctors and student doctors did a round of introductions.
Myself and another colleague - Lavanya Srinivas, we introduced ourselves and got talking to the children. Most of the children spoke either Tamizh or Telugu. With both of us fluent in both languages, it got a bit easy with the children. 

As it was a first time for them and for us, we opted to use stories from books. 

I used a story called the 'The Dream'. Its a story of a girl who wants to play with the stars and is not able to.She has a dream where a fairy asks her to walk along a beautiful pathway,where she will meet '4 feet'(a horse) who will take her to 'No Feet at All' (A fish)who will in turn take her to a 'Staircase with no steps'(A rainbow). She plays with the star, has a fun time and slides back home into her bed. I used dupattas as props to show a rainbow(although they all know VIBGYOR)

Lavanya Srinivas used a story titled 'Purple JoJo' from Tulika books. Its a story about a white dog who gets blue spots on his skin. He asks the sun, a balloon, clouds enquiring who gave him his blue spots. He  finally reaches the blueberry tree under which he slept and finds the blueberry dripping with blue color onto everything below it. It finally rains and he loses his blue spots
More with more sessions!