In the Media

In a vibrant pairam tumban (Pathani suit in Pashto), a wasket (an Afghan waistcoat), printed bhandinia and a turban, Kamal Pruthi, a popular performance storyteller from New Delhi, represents the quintessential kabuliwaala . During the one-hour performance at Ashvita Bistro, he kept children, parents, and other storytellers on the edge of their seats with fascinating stories in Hindi. From the costume and music to the accent, Kabuliwaala , which was performed across 10 cities, has an Afghani influence. The highlight of the performance, was the Attan – a dance form that originated from the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan. “My Afghan collaborators taught me this five-minute dance,” he says, adding, “It is a tougher version of dandiya. In fact, Afghan communities perform it after Eid in Kolkata. In this, men and women dance in two separate circles.” Having performed in six languages — Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, English, German and Urdu — Kamal was thrilled to pepper his storytelling performance with a smattering of Tamil. Along with Muthu Shanmuga Rajan, his coordinator in Chennai, Kamal almost instantly came up with the line ‘kathai kelungal kathai koorungal’ for the workshop. “My idea was to use the line as much as possible at the workshop, which is otherwise in English and Hindi. Tamil is my latest obsession,” he smiles. Kamal says that, as a child, he was introduced to storytelling through comics. “I rented comics such as Chacha Chaudhary , Pinki and Nagraj , for 25 paise and 50 paise, for three days.” He also attributes his journey as a storyteller to his theatre days. As a theatre practitioner, he initially embarked on dramatised readings of stories by Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Premchand, Harishankar Parsai and Amrita Pritam’s poems, through a forum called Garma Garam Chai. “This was set up to celebrate writers from across the globe and to acquaint people with these personalities and their works,” he adds. He went on to establish a storytelling company called Museum Theatre. “I came up with this term on an experimental basis.” Museum Theatre encourages audiences to “move around in the expanse of the performance space and find for themselves the hidden stories”. For all you know, the person sitting beside you could be your next storyteller, he says. This form of storytelling-theatre comprises stories performed by storytellers (unlike actors who enact a storyteller) and has no dialogue formats. “Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah and Hiba Shah are classic examples of storytelling theatre performers,” he points out. To effectively execute this style of storytelling, Kamal handpicks his venues. These can be residential spaces or even a bookstore. The young storyteller introduced Kabuliwaala as a company as well as his next character. “Kabuliwaala is a genre that I introduced to focus on children, teachers, educators and parents; and to redefine storytelling as a performance,” he explains. “A storyteller and his team invest a tremendous amount of time and effort on dance, music, costume, props, problem-solving techniques. A session finds a better application in the corporate world,” he feels. Kamal says that storytellers continue to be roped in to perform or conduct workshops for free. “Many a time, the ticket pricing for a storytelling performance is sadly compared to that of cinema tickets. But cinema is for the masses and the prices work according to the distribution channel. Storytelling, on the other hand, is a live performance,” he explains.