As is a traditional Indian custom, we have spent our childhood Sundays watching Ramayana and Mahabharata with our grandparents.
Once we sat through multiple re-runs of these, Baba (our grand-father) gifted us with his stories. About the time he ran from home at the age of 12 and how the elders wrote telegrams across the country to locate him. About the string of jobs he took up, starting from a newspaper peddler to an accountant and then a textile trader. About the time time when papa almost drowned in a river.
The stories sure engaged us but they also informed our lives. All of us 7 cousins were taught to swim before we respectively turned 5. Was it a conscious precautionary measure that the adults took remembering papa's near drowning experience or an obvious outcome of our island origins? One can never really tell. But looking back, we wonder. We wonder but also understand our origins, our elders, our selves.
We read about Dastan-goi in school's history lessons. An oral storytelling art form. Reading about it transported us to that old living room. A place now defunct in space, but alive in memories of love and laughter. The name, its meaning and the memories it evoked always stayed with us.
When it came to making something through which we will tell our stories, we defaulted to Dastan-goi as an inspiration for the name. We changed Dastan to its synonym 'Kissa' to make it a little ours and we got Kissa-goi. Etymologically, Kissa-goi translates to story-telling. Kissa, a tale and goi, the act of telling.
Telling stories make us human, they said. Hemingway, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones. Kissa-goi is our vehicle, to tell some and hear some.
Dastan-goi: