My passage to Canada
When I sat down to write a story about my storytelling journey, I wondered why I even wanted to do that in the first place. I had certainly enjoyed telling stories over the past decade. So why do I even need to tell my story?
The trouble about thinking that far back, reaching into that crevice is that it invariably reminds me of the odds I have beaten to be where I am today. In that sense, it is not so different from many stories out there as we all go through a kaleidoscope of personal, professional and emotional changes, ups and downs in life. I thus realized I had a story similar to any out there. It is a story that has lead me through thick and thin.
Growing up in a small dingy neighborhood in Karachi Pakistan, I had an almost 50% chance of making it out in a coffin. Despite being next door to one of the most crippling terrorist attack in 1995 at the public school I went to. I have vivid memories of the morning, and how the air I inhaled filled my lungs with smoke, burnt it and smell of burning gun powder hung in the air. I would lying if I said it has passed, because it hasn’t.
How can one expect a 16 year old to forget such moments, I had mistakenly been too curious despite being petrified, and had walked into the hall after I think ‘it was safe’. What I saw, I hold with me even today. It has been over 20 years now, and while there is never closure for such a day in a high schooler’s life, I have healed slowly and surely though carving my own narrative. I changed my circumstances, went to the country biggest university, learnt to be a broadcast storyteller and ended up working in three continents with Emmy and Oscar-winning television productions. Now which ever way I look at it, whatever I have been through, today I can really say the cathartic storytelling process was what kept me together.
Leslie Marmon Silk, the debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant”, in her 1986 story ‘Ceremony’ shared something very profound:
I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death
When I step back and look at my life, it is all but several stories woven together. For me, storytelling is just one of several ways of preserving myself , my minority identity and culture. I’ve crafted films, images, tapes and installations to tell my story, and every time I walk away from the nucleus of my story, I see a different learning in the midst of that process. I walk back, thankful that the universe likes me enough to keep giving me an chance to create again and again.
The Passages Canada ‘Asian Heritage Month’ gave me the opportunity to introspect on where I am today and how has life changed over the past couple of years since I have been in Canada.
The Passages Canada ‘Asian Heritage Month’ gave me the opportunity to introspect on where I am today and how has life changed over the past couple of years since I have been in Canada.
Despite the generous reading and preparatory resources shared by Passages Canada, I was unsure how the speaking sessions would go. I had made massive presentations to hundreds of business professionals, panels, spoken at conferences and hosted television and radio programs for several years. But I had never directly presented to public school children. I didn’t really know what to expect at the schools (Elder’s Mills and Carberry Public School) I ended up speaking at.
I have to admit, it was the most seamless transition of knowledge as any. Facilitated in no small part by the organizers who were exceptionally receptive to my inquiries. The questions by the 3rd and 4th graders were poignant and profound. Children are really smart, my theory keeps getting reaffirmed. Whether it is my niece counting my teeth or a high schooler commenting on the Pakistani rupee notes I handed out after one of my talks.
Society does not realize the extent to which stories, telling or creating them, influences our behavior, shapes our culture and makes us resilient. It can be the Adam and Eve story teaching us about the human code. Or rules of conduct. Think of the stories your grandparents told you, your mother told you while she cooked meals and you perched on that stool in the kitchen. The Fables, Parables, Hadiths and conventions that have molded your values.
We are but blessed if we have the ability to either tell a story or become part of one. And the interesting part is that we all have stories. We just need a moment of introspection for that story to sift through the clutter and come out. How many time have you heard a story that has gently nudged you to move and do more with your life. How many times have we, as characters in a story tried to introspect and learn from our own stories.
Have we cultivated our ability to benefit from our stories? We are only as good as our stories, hence we should learn to dissect, interpret and analyze our story. If we keep telling the same old story then we’re not doing something right. Because we end up repeating our same old stale self. The magic of storytelling is that it can help us turn ourselves into better characters, in the next versions of our own stories.
So open up. Read a story. Be a story. Create a story. Tell a story. Remember to always believe the next guys’s story. Just because it sounds not probable does not mean it is not possible. It only means you were hearing it, not listening to it.
