Potli Baba Ki

When I was a just a kid in school, there used to be a TV serial called as "Potli Baba ki" every Sunday. The storyline was about an elderly character who used to roam around and the local children running behind him pestering for a story. And that man used to oblige the kids with a wonderful new story every time. I don't remember much of those stories except that they had us glued to the idiot box. Actually I loved stories in any format..be it a printed book or a TV serial or a story told by somebody. As I grew up my liking for stories continued in the form of reading books.

Now I am a father and see the same attachment for stories in my kid. I guess all kids have fascination for stories. So it came as no surprise to me that my son started demanding stories during bedtime. Now that caused me considerable panic, for while I have read a lot of stories and can recall quite a few of them, I am an absolute dud at story-telling. I had hoped that my wife would take up that particular activity and spare me. But I miscalculated, she already had the same plans for me and was more prepared for the eventuality. She convinced our son that I was a master story-teller as I read a lot of books and I could tell him many stories. So to cut a long story short I got nominated formally as the story-teller.

Since I had no faith at all in my story-telling abilities I took the next best way out. Fortunately, I had a good collection of the Tinkle Digests. It contained some good stories with supporting pictures. I started telling those stories to my son along with the pictures. This way I memorised 4-5 stories and then took to repeating them one story every night. This went on for a while and I congratulated myself for the danger averted.

I was premature in patting myself. My kid is in the habit of visiting his grand-parents every weekend and his story listening continued with them. Now as with grandmothers and grandfathers the world over, they have quite a good supply of stories with them. All those kings, queens, prince and princesses and fairies and witches started appearing and started making life difficult for me. And when the animals from the jungles made an appearance then my life was just shot to hell. Now my kid started demanding stories with particular characters. The Aesop and Panchantra helped to a certain extent. But one day my son demanded an animal story that I didn't knew of. I should have refused, instead I somehow made up one with the help of my wife. It just gave my son an incentive that I could have done without. He started coming out with different combinations of animals. I tried to blunder my way through, and with my wife laughing her head off in her pillow nearby, it was very discouraging. Many times I tried to dissuade my kid by saying I will tell him the normal stories, but he used to be adamant and insisted that I tell a story for the combination he had prepared for that day.

Gradually I noticed that I had actually started enjoying making up stories during this activity. I noticed that after I completed a story my son appreciates the story and then goes off to sleep. Occasionally he makes a return to the normal stories, but mostly he likes the stories that I make up as per his wish. This is now a pleasurable activity for both of us and I found that we have started bonding more with each other. I also noticed that he tries to make up his own stories. All this has had a positive impact on both of us.

I guess that when I become a grandfather, I too will have lot of stories to tell my grand kids. I will have then joined the rank of story telling grand parents like the world over and I have my kid to thank for this. This makes me think that I too now have what my kid can refer to as "potli baba ki".