Storytelling session with Janaki to offer unique perspective on love

CHENNAI: The Learning Community at Quest is organising a storytelling session with Janaki Sabesh to celebrate love at Quest, Besant Nagar on February 26. This session is for families with children of ages three to six and has interesting folktales for both kids and parents alike.

Speaking to DT Next about collaborating with Janaki Sabesh, Sharanya Dilip, co-founder of Quest, says, “Janaki and I have known each other for the last 13 years. We have seen her career path; from the time she started out as a storyteller and founded Golpo in 2014 to where she is now. We’ve been a part of her journey as she has been for us.”

Quest was founded by Sharanya Dilip and Srikanth C in 2016 in a bid to revolutionise learning and encourage children and adults to learn what they deem important and hone their skills.

Talking about Quest, Janaki says, “I have always believed in giving children the freedom to choose. The number of people who do unschooling is definitely lower, but many people are slowly enrolling their kids in this programme. When they (Sharanya and Srikanth) told me that they wanted to bring in storytelling, we brainstormed and decided to do thematic storytelling.”

She says every month they curate storytelling sessions and explore themes like friendship, compassion, migratory birds and so on. When kids know the theme they come prepared with a set of questions relevant to the theme. They are able to relate these stories to everyday incidents or even news that they see or hear. Their immersion is very important because stories are known to connect bridges, she adds.

Talking about the stories she will be narrating, she says, “We often associate love with living things and relationships like friends or family, but we don’t see that with inanimate objects. We could be in love with things like a shoe or a watch. So, I will be exploring the theme of loving materials or objects through these hilarious, didactic and thought-provoking stories.”

Having said that the kids ask her many questions, what is the funniest question she has ever been asked? She laughs, “Not a question, but an incident for sure. During a session, a child aged three walked up to me and placed his hand on my mouth and said, ‘Podhum’ (enough). I haven’t forgotten that to this day.”

Sharing what she is looking forward to from the event she says, “Every session is different. I get to meet and interact with different kids and that’s what gets me going. I’m looking forward to meeting all these lovely tots.”

The tickets are priced at Rs 500 per child and parent. Tickets are available at https://pages.razorpay.com/celebratinglove.