ART OF STORYTELLING AND LEADERSHIP

With the students of Bjena PS.

Going by geographical size, Athang-Thedtsho stands the largest of all 47 constituencies comprising eight far scattered gewogs and one town. Rugged mountains, steep hills and hair-raising narrow farm roads makes my journey to the remote part of my constituency, often challenging. Worst when monsoon brings incessant rain forcing me to reschedule my plans frequently to avoid road blockage and landslides. Yet all is worth wherever I go. As People’s Representative, whether or not I can address all the issues, I’m unneeded nowhere. Maybe I’m giving the best in me to my people or maybe it is customary for the constituents to expect their Member of Parliament to regularly meet them. Whatsoever be the reason, this time I planned my visit in such a way that, whenever weather played against my plan, I had something fruitful to do. For a twist, I sewed visiting schools within proximity to my travel plan. And to my astonishment, it was undoubtedly one of the right decisions that I had ever made. 

I learned that hopping to schools and catching up with innocent minds could completely set myself free from all sorts of stresses, both political and personal. In other words, meeting them quickly translated to happiness. By the way, I didn’t mean to circumscribe my visit as recreational and neither did I call on schools for mere interaction. I had empirically chosen a topic and that was ‘art of storytelling and leadership’. The idea was partly to study children’s cognitive development and partly to stimulate teachers and parents to engage in storytelling as part of their daily teaching-learning ritual. I hold a belief that ‘storytelling culture in school and home’ can inspire children and eventually as they grow up, they will be able to exhibit leadership in wide range of callings - be it leadership in business, sports, politics, teaching, military, engineering, doctoring and the list goes on.  

Swayed by this well focused motive, I had met teachers and students of Jala Primary school under Ruebi gewog, Bjena Primary school under Bjena gewog and Rinchengang Primary school under Thedtsho gewog in a month’s extend of my constituency visit. While meeting them, I asked whether they had grandparents at home. Most children raised hands and roared ‘yes’ while some said their grandparents died. I then inquired whether their grandparents had been talking with them frequently. Children responded ‘yes’ in all the three schools. I probed further and asked if their parents could give them enough time as their grandparents did. Shockingly, in all the three schools, children rumbled ‘no’. A few children were not so sure. But those responses were enough to draw a sample that in remote places, grandparents play integral role in bringing up the children. Taking this quick observation into learning, my assumption is, both teachers and parents must be able to explore capabilities of our grandparents in molding the lives of our children. 

With the students and teachers of Rinchengang PS.

As we begin to contemplate more on this, we mustn’t forget that we are entangled in the rapidly changing world. We also mustn’t forget that our grandparents are paid less heed by adults including their own children and their lone task is apparently to look after their grandchildren. Perhaps it is quite a usual Asian culture to entrust parents to look after our grandchildren but it is morally incorrect to load our aging parents with grandchildren on their backs, daylong. They are too old to carry them, for they had carried us far too long as parents. Rather, give them the choice to do what they like the most to do with their grandchildren. I presume, one thing they usually like to do with their grandchildren is storytelling.

This being the reason why I like to talk about ‘storytelling’ to teachers and students. My memories from childhood pretty much convinces me that grandparents are best at storytelling. Even if they are not, they can never be bad. They genuinely love to share their wonderful life experiences with everyone including strangers. Actually, experience sharing is worth listening. Children can learn to compare lives now and lives then. Either way, children are interested in any genre of stories – be it fables, folklores, fairytales, drama, comedy, tragedy, experience sharing, history lessons, biography and many more. Bottomline is, there should be some takeaways from the stories, say some morals or knowledges. If one story is devoid of both at least there will be some fantasies our children may always enjoy. Fantasies in stories will eventually prepare our children to think out of box. They can grow up to become highly creative person. 

Albert Einstein rightly pointed out that, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want your children to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” His wisdom can never go wrong. If then who can challenge our grandparents in fairytales? Achu Dhakar (Brother Moon), Bjetsi Gyalp Jumrim (Rat King with long tail), Chaka and Bjam (Monkey and Hen) and there are thousand others full of myth and mysteries that our grandparents are able to narrate. Well then, we must tap the best out of our grandparents now or these folk literatures will die with them. Our present era doesn’t have the habit and culture of listening to stories and what we are interested in is, real event stories. Programs we see on TV are mostly reality shows. Books we read and films we see are human dramas and not fairytales.  

With the students of Jala PS.

Look storytelling is required everywhere. A cosmetic seller with good storytelling skill can attract more customers than the one who is not. For example, the one skilled will be gathering all catchy adjectives to create a story about a cream that she is about to sell. She may say, this cream will effectively wipe out all pimples on the customer's face in a few days’ time and she may further convince that her skin will glow to beauty in less than a week. She may then say that soon men will swarm around for her beauty. How effective her cream really is, we never know but her art of storytelling will definitely urge the customer to buy her product. Although business term for this kind of stories is squeezed into one word and we call it ‘advertisement’ yet the art involved is storytelling. She is narrating a story about the cosmetic effect of her cream. Similarly, creative science teachers, before teaching the theories of science, usually narrate biographies of scientists to inspire children. Say biography of Isaac Newton to teach Newton’s law; biography of Albert Einstein to teach theory of relativity; and, biography of Thomas Edison to teach invention of light bulb. One fundamental impact that the storytelling creates on listeners is 'inspiration'. 

Art of storytelling is valid in any profession and any affairs we manage in life. In 2018 Democratic Election, beside the role of candidate, I did assume another responsibility and that was as media strategist. To sell our party’s pledges, I remember crafting several realistic stories. Back then, pledges of all the political parties appeared almost identical and we were compelled to be more creative than the others so that electorates would fondly distinguish us. Well, I don’t know if is fair to say that were the best but we definitely stood out tall amongst the four contesting political parties. Uniquely, I’ve self-contentment for creating the viral slogan ‘Tsagay Malang’ to narrate the national pledges in cartoon format.