Off The Cuff: A wry look at life

I once read that to be a successful journalist one must know how to tell a story and tell it well – well enough for others to want to read it. Once you learn the ropes and meet your deadlines, the rest, as my son says is "easy–peasy".

Well, since I have proved to be successful with story telling while my three kids were growing up, I guessed I possessed the essential qualification for my presence in the field.

And when I say "story telling" I don't mean just reading and enacting stories from fairy tales, but making up new ones on the spur of the moment when the usual ones from the books have been rejected.

I wonder sometimes if that has contributed to my spontaneity and ability of making news out of nothing, but I can't say for sure.

I often wondered where I picked up this trait, as one is never educated in story telling as such. Then as we all gathered together after dinner, I watched Dad enthrall his grandchildren with an after dinner story and realised it must be a gene that ran in the family.

It was the story of Phulumal, a villager in Sindh, who mastered three words of the English language and gave everyone the impression he spoke the language well. Until of course his path crossed with the law and he used the three words (yes, no, and go on) in a warped sense and was soon put behind bars.

The story has been repeated so often that if it was on video or disc, it would have been eroded by now, but it's dad's story telling trait that keeps the story fresh and original each time around.

The kids never fail to roll with laughter every time he tells the tale. And among the many stories he tells them, they could listen to this one at least thrice in a week.

But not entirely convinced with the gene theory I decided to look elsewhere. After all nature can never fully succeed unless it has nurture on its side. I was still wondering how and why I got into relating things and events, when mom–in–law returns from a community social and brings me up to date on all I had missed because of a looming deadline.

As she sat by me and related the events of the evening, connecting them with people and events of her childhood it occurred to me that she always done this ever since I knew her – which is a good 14 years.

She had this amazing ability to relate events with such vivacity that I could visualise everything.

And her stories always had a peg. A peg that either connected the present with the past or people with their human nature or just plain community news that always brought us up to date with scandals, trends and events around us.

It struck me suddenly like bolt out of the blue; here was one more person who had contributed to my story telling ability.

Without her or me knowing, I had learnt to relate and retell events adding to them a human element. I now also knew how to convey ideas and thoughts crisply, completely and convincingly.

As I wondered how many more people had contributed to my journalistic ability and how many more people I need to acknowledge through this piece, my husband walked in to remind me that I was going to be late for the movies once again if I didn't hurry up.

Well, whoever taught me to tell the stories there is only one person who taught me to keep the deadlines.

Need I mention whom? I guess not.