Cubbon Park Becomes a Storytelling Adda!

Amrita Tripathy writes about our recent storytelling session at Cubbon Park…

Last month, we were back again with a storytelling session at Cubbon Park. On 27th August, a few Bangaloreans braved the rain and grey skies to attend this very session. Geared with windcheaters and umbrellas, a crowd had gathered near the

reading zone’s red canopy. 

In association with The Hindu, Pratham Books celebrated Cycle Day at the park with an

interactive storytelling session. Designed to captivate all age groups, the storytelling session included not one but three stories!

Author of ‘Apu’s Giant Earthquake’, Sudeshna Shome Ghosh enthralled the young audience with a  song and the tale of how Bey-asura’s cacophonic singing caused the earthquake. Singing with Bey-

asura was indeed fun for the kids.

 Keeping the tempo alive, Janhavi Lakshminarayanan narrated the

hilarious story ‘Hatchu! Ha-aaa- tchu!’ where one man’s sneezing troubled an entire village. And of course, a lot of sneezing ensued when the children tried to enact Hatchuram’s sneezing! Janhavi, who is also a freelance

Kannada translator with Pratham Books, read ‘Up World, Down World’, one of the books from our

STEM book series. This is a story about a girl named Fatima who befriends a Malabar

dormouse and visits the tree canopies to meet the inmates there.

Doesn’t it sound exciting to bump into or spot a green vine snake, a tree frog, a fruit bat and more

such arboreal animals in a canopy walk? Fatima meeting these arboreal animals in the story and having a party with them gives us hope that wild animals can co-exist with human beings.

Seeing the young audience’s spirit, I forgot that I was unwell.

It was definitely a fun, riveting, story-filled morning for children of all ages!