Fairy Tales! More or no more??

Fairy Tales! More or no more??

In a whatsapp group a debate got me thinking. How relevant are the fairy tales today and the thoughts expressed got me worried. 'Life is not always good over evil' said one, 'Nothing magical exists, so why fool the kids' said another, while still another proclaimed 'there is no Santa Claus, so why not tell stories as they should be told'. I object, my lord, for I firmly believe that the kids today are much smarter and are able to differentiate between the real and the magical. Kids are not stupid as they have the world available to them at the click of a button. From a very early age, they are exposed to the world of games, stories and much more than we ever were. They know where to draw the line much to our dismay and amazement and from a very small age too.

Unlike us when we were kids, who believed that seeds thrown in the ground grew a beanstalk to the sky above. Let's not kid ourselves cause we did bury those seeds in the ground and water it with the hope to climb up there and meet the Giant. Who can forget Hansel and Gretel being left behind in the forest - but not to forget how smartly they found their way home by leaving a trail behind. So what if the second time the trail of bread was eaten by the birds and they landed at the witches house. The kids did escape with the riches, did they not.  Just goes to show that every fairy tale has shown how resourceful and intelligent the kids were.  So what's not right or scary about sharing these stories today.  The story about the Golden Goose that laid the golden egg taught me not to be greedy....The 3 Little Pigs building houses of straw, sticks and bricks taught me not to just take whatever I find to build my life, or choose the easy way out, but to explore what would be better. Not to forget my favourite one The Ugly Duckling that became a swan, and you may ask why? As a kid, like many other girls, I never thought I was beautiful but today when I look back, I realise it helped me realise my potential slowly and surely to achieve a lot more important things in life.

As kids, we all  loved a fairy tale with a happily ever after, so did I. I am sure the kids today too enjoy the good conquering over the evil with magic even if it is not the wicked witch but Harry Potter. Imagination and the magical world is not a thing of our times.  Everyone has imagination in varying degrees. Some kids imagine the worst to fight like flying dragons while other kids just like fighting the animals in the forest. Worrying whether the story is too scary or what is the take away or that it is not true to life is just in our heads only. What  matters is that most kids today are able to understand it better and they are much more creative and fearless than we were as kids. They never accept anything at face value and question everything.  Visuals in the stories may have changed to flying dragons, swords to depict those mythological or magical stories about cultures around the world but the essence is the same. When we were kids, the stories were told with pictures in the book and today the same stories are repackaged cinematically for the kids today. Fairy tale children movies, television shows or comics still tell the story of Snow White surprisingly for the kids in a suitable format, while for the adults it is recreated as "Snow White and the Huntsmen".  It just proves that there is a merit to the fairy tales and besides this just makes it that much easier for us to read to our kids, does it not? They say the world is round and what is new today is old tomorrow, so let's not dismiss off all of those stories that we grew up with. They taught us about friendship, life and hope. Today kids are sceptical of everything and they never stop questioning 'why'? so it is up to us to how spin off the moral of the tale. Take it a step forward and ask them to invent their own endings and be prepared to be surprised. Kids don't scare easily these days and unlike us don't turn our heads away when a head is cut off with a sword. They revel in the sword fights, the fire breathing dragons and ghostly figures in the corridors and it is not just the boys, but the girls too. In this virtual world of stories, computer games, it is still a good idea to let the kids dream the unbelievable, create their own worlds of fantasy and fly the fantastic world of magical where goodness still conquers the evil. As for us who grew up with fairy tales when life was simple, use these as a way to share your childhood stories to the kids. 

Lit-O-fest, writing and me!!!

It all began with some out of the blue some random thoughts that began to flow in the middle of the night and from that day onwards a pen and pad always lay open on my bedside. The "filmy keeda" in me seemed to be wriggling its way onto paper and I began writing stories that had a touch of life and things that I had seen around me and on celluloid. I remember how it all started. I used to handle annual reports at the bank where I was working, collating data, coordinating shoots and actually proof reading the data for my colleagues something I did not need to but began to enjoy and love ensuring standardization in the data. This was probably the best time in my career. Those random thoughts seemed to be calling out to me and often during the lunch time I began to put down thoughts and mailed them off to myself and began fleshing them out at night...Writing has always been something I loved and even more surprising was the love for proof reading which somehow I became totally fascinated with ....  it was just something that I continue to do unconsciously for everything I read, sometimes to the dismay of my friends whose stuff I begin to correct.

Almost all my efforts  pointed me towards self publishing with exorbitant costs  to print, market and promote leaving me wondering what would I get out of the whole deal. Time flew as wrote and ran through a million options to get my stories out there.  No one seemed to want to publish short stories anymore and besides novels were being published dime a dozen.  I began to wonder how and what would make me so different from others.  Writing a novel was not for me definitely, as I cannot put it down until I know how it ends. It has to be short and sweet for me with a closure at the earliest. So that's why perhaps even a Saas-bahu serial on TV does not hold my attention sadly!  That did not stop me from writing as I shared my stories with friends, In fact to put it plainly forced them to read!!!...... and then Lit-O-Fest just happened to me like a rainbow on a rainy day.

My long journey of four years just melted into nothingness reading a mail acknowledging my manuscript submission to the festival that said " "Congratulations!  We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been finalized for the LIT-O-FEST 2016 Awards. Please do come on the 20th Feb to be a part of the LIT-O-FEST event and the award ceremony."   That was IT for me. Someone out there had thought my words were worthy to be read. That in itself was an achievement and to get to this day when I can a big thank you to Smita Parekh, Festival Director and her team at Lit-O-Fest for appreciating the writer in me. Yes, I won, I won in the "get published" section.  Whatever this holds for me in the future is just a big big dollop of icing and a culmination of a dream come true.

So let me share what Lit-O-Fest is.......Lit-O-Fest is a festival with a difference and a one of its kind initiative where publishing contracts are signed with deserving authors and what's more for free. It's a festival with a philanthropic perspective as this is an only platform where one-the-spot publishing contracts are signed with deserving authors. A friend Hariharan Iyer introduced me to this festival and  I submitted my manuscript in the short stories section a few months ago. 

The festival was held at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, on February 20- 21, 2016 and when I walked into the college premises on Day 1,  it was so heart-warming to be received by the students who escorted me to the multimedia room where an talk was already in session. As I sat there listening, I felt an immense sense of peace and happiness that comes with just being a part of something so laudable. Sailesh Lodha of Tarak Mehta fame brought a smile on our faces as he spoke on how we have lost our ability to laugh and finding laughter and humor in everything.  A session with Ram Jethmalaniji on money laundering in our country and its repercussions that followed was so eloquently put that I could not but marvel at this 93 year grand old gentleman. He actually refused to sit down but chose to stand and talk at the dais for over thirty minutes with such truth and passion. If this is not inspiring then for me nothing ever will.

The awards ceremony began with the Lit-O-Fest giving away the 'Living Legend’ award to legends Narendra Kohli, Kiran Nagarkar, Pankaj Dubey for Creative Leadership and Radhakrishnan Pillai in the education field. I had the privilege of being there to listen to them share their thoughts. Thereafter, I was called on stage to receive my award at the hands of Ram Jethmalani ji and what an euphoric feeling and honour indeed. Though knowing me, I did not let Shatrughan Sinha leave before expressing my disappointment to him. He was to give the awards away but was getting late and he very sweetly acknowledged me by saying he could not wait as he had another appointment. My bad luck.

I wish that I could have gone again on Day 2, but for another commitment.  It was not surprising to read that Day 2 saw sessions with Manoj Bajpayee and Shilpa Shukla, child abuse and  teenage tantrums with Kiran Manral, Harish Iyer and Sonali Shroff with the  event ith concluding with live band by Leslie Lewis.

We all live in a world of stress and competition and everyone is definitely impatient for sure and wanting things to happen overnight, including me,  but as the saying goes "there is a time and place for everything" .....and the time and place for me is definitely now....