Share your thoughts on this story....The Chinese Mirror by Mirra Ginsberg...

Here is a beautiful story to tell:
(adapted by me with due apologies to the author....)

Long ago, there lived a man who traveled from his small village in Korea into china, selling his hand made goods…and wherever he went people exchanged the lovely handcrafted toys he made with money or some such item that he liked and that they owned.

One day as he was walking down the street he came across a man who gave him a round shiny thing in exchange for his exquisite toy.It seemed quite interesting so he took it and put it in his pocket.

He returned all the way back to his village having quite forgotten this round thing. As he was going to remove his clothes, his hands found it and he took it out, to his surprise the round shiny thing was showing him a moving picture of a man. It must be the King of China, he thought, and bowed down to the shiny thing, carefully placed it in a box at the corner of his room and decided that he would pray to the King of China from now on as the King had brought him luck...and went for his bath.

Every day he would remove it atleast once a day to see the moving picture and pray to it.

His wife was a very curious woman, but not very smart, she saw her husband and what he was doing and instead of asking him, she decided to quietly investigate when he was not there. She opened the box and lifted the round shiny object and looked at it. Omma…Oppa...she wailed…"My husband is cheating on me...I am ruined"

Her Mother-in law rushes in and pacifies her then takes the object... heehhe she laughed

"For sure, Woman you have very poor mind…and now eyes too…my son has brought a witch into the house. What an ugly picture …!

Her husband walks in and asks to see the object

"Both of you are useless, this picture is surely of our long lost ancestor, my son must have found it when he went to China, I am told my great grandfather also traveled to China just like my son….

Why should he keep it in a box, let us keep it outside so that all can see a picture of our ancestor!"

...all go away thinking their thoughts...

The little son who was watching, quietly grabs the object and runs into the garden

"Oppa, opaa"…he cries, just as his mother…"This horrible boy has only stolen my marbles…"

Hearing this racket the neighbour and everyone come running to see

The neighbour thinking the boy was holding some monstrous thing, grabs it from him…

There is a tug of war…

The boy shouting, "Give it back to me you bully"

The neighbour shouting, "let it go, it is hurting you"

The thing flies from their hands and crashes into the wall…

Breaking into thousands of pieces of shiny glass…

They rushed to see…what was this magical thing..that changed so many times and was now was just lying there, shiny pieces that no one could do anything about

( Can we find a beautiful metaphor for this story? I have one...

But please spend a few minutes putting down your thoughts on what suitable metaphor can be extracted from this story, send it to me,  and I will share my thoughts with you)

Oh I love Stories...

and the wonderful meanings we can extract from it

  

Cannot say it better

Here is a poem that I found, worth every letter in gold!
The joy of stories wrapped up in a brilliant ditty.

Enjoy

NAKED TRUTH AND PARABLE

Naked Truth walked down the street one day.

People turned their eyes away.

Parable arrived, draped in decoration.

People greeted Parable with celebration.



Naked Truth sat alone, sad and unattired,

"Why are you so miserable?" Parable inquired.

Naked Truth replied, "I'm not welcome anymore.

No one wants to see me. They chase me from their door."


"It is hard to look at Naked Truth," Parable explained.

"Let me dress you up a bit. Your welcome will be gained."

Parable dressed Naked Truth in story's fine attire,

with metaphor, poignant prose, and plots to inspire.


With laughter and tears and adventure to unveil,

together they went forth to spin a tale.

People opened their doors and served them their best.

Naked Truth dressed in story was a welcome guest.
(Forest, 1996) 

World Story Telling day 30th March- Chicken Licken with a twist

"Sometimes the act of doing something itself gives a sense of satisfaction"
So it was on World Storytelling Day-March 20th

Those opening words are my excuse for not sharing and blogging about our day of stories with tiny tots of Makkala Mandira; a government run play school on campus and a laboratory for the students of VHD Central Institute of Homescience in Gandhi Nagar, Bangalore.

These dates have been created primarily for us to take efforts to actively engage with our community, and so when the urge hit me, I just tossed the question to my friend and partner Aparna;
"Where do we tell a story for World Storytelling Day?", and she promptly came up with Makkala Mandira!

As part of our endeavor to use stories as tools for learning and socio-emotional development, I bring the stories and my friend Aparna (Kid and Parent Foundation) helps me convert them into wonderful interactive platforms for us to engage with children, adults and every soul connected and concerned with Human Development!

So the story I chose was the classic Chicken-Licken, but with a twist!

The traditional story also known as Henny-Penny or Chicken Little,is about a little chick that fears, "the sky is falling" on its head. This folk tale has been  used as an inspiration for the famous animated cartoon film, Chicken Little.

The earliest reference to this story line dates as far back as 25 centuries ago to the Jataka Tales. A parable, the Jataka story talks about how Buddha in order to illustrate how we avoid facing the truth and delude ourselves, which in turn becomes our fears, tells us the story of a Rabbit that runs around telling everyone (all the animals) the earth is cracking, and finally it is the Lion who stops the rabbit and investigates the cause. The Lion discovers a mango on the ground (one version says it is the Bengal Quince: the Bilva/ Bilvapatre or Vilvum fruit, considered to be sacred by the Hindus, we also know it as the hard Wood Apple fruit, funny tasting with an unbelievably hard outer shell), and shows the animals how the foolish chicken's fear was triggered by a falling fruit.

 My version as I told you went with a twist. Sometimes the adaptation is made according to availability of props (I am not very sure if this is technically correct, but then I try not to take away the cultural or environmental context of the story), or with the audience.

This western version is classified under the Aarne-Thompson classification as a Formula Tale-Chains involving Other events; a chain story). Here we had Chicken running away from a sound it hears to tell the King, all the way up the hill and down the hill, meeting a family of birds; a Hen, a Cock and a Turkey(all with cute names like Henny-Penny, Cocky- Lockey, Turkey-Lurkey), and finally the trickster fox, Foxy-Loxy.

In the western version the fox dupes the birds and takes them to a place where it eats them up. While this can be used in a context where we talk about personal safety and not being tricked into believing strangers. I combined it with the Asian version to introduce a wise Owl, that warns the birds to run away and who eventually helps them investigate the cause of the loud sound, which turns out to be a fallen coconut ( while the western version tells us it an acorn, which we don't see around here)

So leaving the tiny tots with powerful visualisation of look, understand and then react...

We enjoyed visualising the story and the children and their caretakers too were very impressed.

Hope you too liked our contribution towards making stories, imagination, creativity and wonder a part of  every child and person in this World.

(A wonderful classification for Folklorists available on this link: Aarne-Thompson-wikipedia
check it out)