Once a week, every Wednesday, we visit a small community library site, nestled within a boys home and for a few brief hours, unfold the magic of stories among them.
The session brings together around 10 boys who stay, play, study and work together within this home. In this group is L who struggles to make sense of written words, and U who is content to sit cross legged head over book, and look neither right nor left as he reads, and S who is eager to respond loud and clear to every question. Also in this group, is P who is so astute that he makes connections and cross connections within and between stories, and V who looks at each picture and narrates his own story confidently and expressively, and A who loves to draw and begins each session with the question, “Aaj drawing hai? “
They are a diverse group of young individuals, vocal and bold as they assert their identity within this space, divided in their likes and dislikes but united in one aspect. They love stories. 
As the Read Aloud book opens and each page unfolds, the story spreads its magic as all, both juniors and seniors, cluster together…and listen.
Some weeks ago, in our first session of the academic year, we decided to do a story on Memory. Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox, is a story that encompasses this theme gently but irrevocably. 
We opened up this theme through a pre-story activity and discussion and then began the story. In the report that followed the session, the various initial responses to Memory as below:
‘Memory was opened up and responses elicited about what it meant. L said it is usually something happy. The others said it could be something sad also. They connected it to exams and said that often they forget things during exams and can’t remember what to write. They felt everyone has memory problems and forget things, old people and young people both. T suggested talking with people and reading as ways to get back ones memory.’
Memory is something so abstract, but the story conveyed this abstraction beautifully. The boys followed Wilfrid in the story, as he carefully chose and handed over each memory to Miss. Nancy. In the extension activity that followed, each one drew out one strong memory that they remember a lot. These expressions in art had both joyous and sad moments, memories both close to home and close to heart. 
A week prior to this session, we had opened out this same story to a group of Senior Citizens in a session that took place in a Senior Citizens Recreation Centre. And the same magic had unfolded, deeper and nostalgic.
Stories do this. They bridge gaps and defy age in a way that few else does. They make us relive moments and provoke further such moments, thoughtful, provocative, grounded and magical. 
‘He called on Mr. Drysdale who had a voice like a giant. ‘What’s a memory?’,he asked.
‘Something as precious as gold, young man, something as precious as gold.’
And so also are Stories. 🙂
