An eternal journey of finding our story together.
From dawn to dusk, humans have been tired of everything but stories. The curiosity of fundamental questions remains as fresh as they were at the dawn of times and stories have been the effort that puts us one step closer to these questions to find new questions. I am an aspiring storyteller, not a literal storyteller standing in front of the campfire narrating my dreams and emotions but sitting in front of a laughing white paper, a plain keyboard, a laptop, or being idle, trying to explain my mind through what I understand and I don’t. I tell stories, think stories and twist stories, be it on a piece of white paper, the digital sensor of a camera, or the keys of a piano to bend the space-time continuum to find a new way of trying to reach the truth. When I am among stories, they offer me such hints of gladness that I can almost tell, they save me every time. I am confident enough to acclaim myself as the jack-of-many-trades, but humble enough not to call myself a polymath, trying to learn till I reach the grave and beyond.
My experience of working with brands made me realise there are always quite a few vital stories to unearth from the brand’s psyche that even a fully established brand hasn’t seen. That’s where the subjectivity of the storyteller comes into play. Being a wanderer of thoughts and a lateral thinker, I support brands shovelling their new stories from their unconscious. I think through all my hats and am used to applying various thinking methods. Through listening, reading and observation, I have been trained to find the vital ingredients required in a story to make it take the giant leap. From non-linear narratives, and Chekov’s gun to catharsis and dramatic irony, I learnt the dramatic techniques to build a profound story. But, then what’s a profound story? To find out what is a profound story, that’s where my real quest is. I can apply story-telling techniques to make a human a graceful hero, a brand, successful, and an incident vital to life. As I ponder over the curiosity that shapes us to learn till we die, I recall an incident, a decisive moment from my life, when I asked a conscious question that was beyond what elders wouldn’t identify as the curiosity of kids. Now, will be the time to look through the mirror of my past.
I remember this incident when my father took me to the terrace at dusk, a new moon day. I had a great time. It was an unexpected event because the wind flowed through my house that day, creating goosebumps on my underdeveloped hair. I was astounded by the sky and the stars that glittered through the vast mattress of the dark blue sky. I was shocked because, the stars didn’t move due to the wind, while the trees, were moving like it was dancing their bodies off. I was astounded and asked my father why the stars didn’t move. He said,” Stars are too far away from us that it’s hard for the wind to touch them.”I was wondering how far were the stars from me. That moment made me ask questions, some silly, some trivial, some of which I have not gotten the answers, some of which I will never get. However, the quest for learning became a conscious process for me from that moment. The whole world was preparing me to learn that the beauty of a phenomenon or a thing is not just in its appeals but in the trajectory of how it reveals to us a deeper truth, a hidden gem, that shines when it becomes clear, only to fool us that it’s hidden beyond the shine, as Heidegger puts it.
I glided my adolescence with questions, attending quiz competitions, music competitions, writing and performing in plays, winning some of them and losing many of them, later to realise that contesting in competitions was more meaningful than winning them. The more competitions I contested, the more I was anxious as none of my profound questions served me an answer. The last technical competition that I contested to win was my twelfth board examination. The moment we get a cherishable score in your board examination, the nature of topping the billboard gets buried forever. Despite being uninterested to learn for getting marks, that profound moment gave me a little happiness and empowered me to ask further questions, as we had the taste of victory. The competitions that I attended after that were all for the joy of the learning process. Like every one in three people choose Engineering in India, I chose the same, but I chose Engineering for reasons unlike the others. Mine was to get answers to my questions. But, the first week I lost interest in Engineering because here too marks mattered more than learning. But, somehow I managed to sail through this place of competition, by trying to learn through my concepts and shifted my interest towards stories. Stories from movies, literature and music. I have listened to stories that my grandmother told me. I never realised that they had an impact on me, until I started reading folktales across the world. I read literature from across the world. Did I get answers? I got more questions, and certainties that are vulnerable, uncertainties that are transfixed. In my quest to find new perspectives and deeper truth of the nature of being, I ventured into various streams of work from a chemical plant to a stock market firm and even a government organisation named FaMeTN. These experiences offered me a world that I had not known and stories that were both new and belonging to me. This chiselled my approach to storytelling and expanded the world of my understanding of the world and its unconscious murmur of the hearts. I have uploaded my portfolio for your reference to judge me as a storyteller.
I write stories, stories of all kinds, non-fiction, fiction, blogs, brand stories, creative copies, articles, newsletters, reports, press releases, print ads, social media ads and screenplays. My special niche is to be ready for the quest of finding the nature of being and unearthing the objective reality present in the subjective situation. I work to create stories of brands, organisations, and people. I have an eye for finding the unknown element of intrigue in a world known to everyone. As I talked initially about the dusk and dawn of nature, we are aware of neither of them, but we know that we are part of great history, history evident through the paintings on the cave rocks of Europe, terracotta artefacts of Keeladi to name a few. I hope to scribble beautiful nothing here and there, that might serve as a record of the lives of nature (inclusive of people) of my times and people who lived before me, to create something for the future. I wish to collaborate with you, the reader to understand you and empathise with you to use my experiences along with yours to create your profound story for tomorrow.
Thank you.
Srivatsan.M