Storytelling - An art lost in time?

Storytelling is an art that has been the way humans communicate and let out emotion, knowledge and experience. One of the most comprehensive and well documented story ever written comes from the Hindu Mythology from the land of India. It indeed is Mahabharata. The most epic adventure ever written. The Mahabharata was written in the 4th Century by Ganesha. But it wasn't just written by him, this was a story that a pandit by the name 'Vyasa' narrated to Ganesha who had listened, understood and written it for Vyasa. The great scripture contains 18 parvas, each parva being a different book, not a chapter, but an entire book which describe to us in detail about the 'Bharata Dynasty'

Trying to convey emotions and experience has always been the way humans lived even before we could talk. One of the most early cave paintings in France, and many more in the world show us that even before the brain of the actual Human completely developed to the way we are today, we wanted to convey emotion to the ones around him and the latter. It could be about how he took down a beast, or could be about his opinion or findings about the cosmos or could be even about the invention of the wheel. All of these show us that this is of extreme importance, the art of sharing mind. What we just simply call story telling is not just a mere narration of a few sentences, but can be of various forms. A kid tells a story about how he fell off his bike on the way to the candy store, a composer takes us on a magical journey into the deepest realms of his mind and paints our senses with his masterpiece, an opus, a symphony. Paintings make people run into tears, not always because of the complexity or the strokes but because of the journey the artist takes us on. Story telling is the way a being expresses himself. It can be as small as the simple emotion of a child or could be a brilliant symphony.

Storytelling, in the modern era seems to have lost its importance to the average human being but still rests and will continue to stay in the soul of every industry. People continue with their lives thinking its been a long time since I've heard a bedtime story, read a book or things like that. But the fact of just reading a story is not just it. There are stories around us, everyday and almost everywhere we go. A movie, a song video, a game or an advertisement on the tv tells us a story. For that matter, even the smallest thing as the illustration on the top of a grocery item that we buy for the most mundane of uses tells us a story. The case of the most seemingly silly purchase of something like, say toilet paper. Even then, our mind tends to go for the one that has the huge fluffy bear on it. This is because the bear tells us a story. The bear might not narrate one, but the soft and tender big bear makes us feel and assures that the paper will be soft because he looks happy. The big happy bear gives us this message. All these little gestures that make us think about someone's emotion and someone's heart is precisely storytelling. This clearly shows and tells us that, the art of story telling is not dead and neither is it dormant. It still rests and is an integral part of our society and the world around us. Its just that we are unaware of it. All we need to do is to just keep looking.