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When Shiva told a story

Published in Devlok, Sunday Midday, July 08, 2012

One day Parvati got bored and begged Shiva to entertain her. So he told her a story, the worlds

first story. This story was told in a secret cave somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas. The

plot would have been lost in the snow but for a tiny bird that survived in that cold desolate

landscape. This bird shared the story with a fish. The fish shared it with a Gandharva who

shared it with the Yaksha. Much may have been lost in translation for, by the time the story

reached humanity, it was not one but hundreds of stories with myriad plots and characters,

with amazing twists and turns. It was called the Brhadkatha, or the vast story. Later it was called

the Katha-sarit-sagar, the ocean of stories. There were stories within stories, like whirpools of

thought, sucking everyone in and then spitting them out.

Imagine life without stories. We would have no hero or villain, no comedy or tragedy, no

adventure, no heaven or hell, perhaps not even God. Stories are such an integral part of our

lives that we forget how critical it is to defining our humanity.

Animals do not tell stories. They do not have the wherewithal one needs to tell a story. They donot have the neo-frontal cortex, the most recently developed part of the brain, located just

behind our forehead that allows us to imagine. From imagination come stories.

Animals do not need stories. When hungry, they eat. When thirsty, they drink. Having eaten

and drank, they rest or play. But not humans. We want to know why we are hungry and why we

are thirsty. It bothers us. We seek explanations. We need a story for that. And there are many

stories.

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Someone said that hunger and thirst were Gods punishment because humans did not listen to

him. God? Who is that? What is that? Was it an idea that came from stories? Or did stories

articulate this idea for us? We can argue endlessly. We can even ask if heroes exist in the world

before stories, or did the idea of a hero come to us from stories?

Of course, science came along and rejected everything that stories told us. Today scientists tell

us there is no God. And historians will tell you that notions of heroes and villains are not true

either. There is no objective criteria, no checklist, for defining a hero. What is hero for one, is

villain for another. It all comes from our imagination. We just have to switch on the television

and pick up a newspaper to realize this. They reveal how storytellers construct the world for us,

twist and turn events to make the same thing look comic and tragic. And we wonder what truth

is. Is there a truth out there?

Perhaps , it is to provoke this question that Shiva told Parvati the first story.