Priya Muthukumar has mastered the art of story-telling and helped communities connect deeply with nature
Priya Muthukumar
Fiction has always made a better job of the truth and one of those who realised it early on is Priya Muthukumar. The founder of the performance story-telling initiative Storipur, Priya uses the ancient art of storytelling to build communities, connect people with Nature, and make learning interesting through shared thoughts on social and environmental responsibilities. What’s more, from managing the education of several schools to criss-crossing the city telling stories on curious topics, she does it all single-handedly.
“I started out as a jack of all trades,” laughs Priya who has been a Bengalurean for 14 long years. “I am a qualified pharmacist and did work in that capacity in a couple of companies. Then I started working with an airline company at the Chennai airport. After getting married, I had to move to Bengaluru and worked at the airport for a while before DD News held another opportunity for me. It was only after my daughter was born and we were looking for a school for her that I realised my true calling in life in education. The next seven years I spent as a teacher and then as a nursey co-ordinator in her school,” says the mother of a thirteen year old.
It is thanks to her daughter that Priya realised how trapped the present system of education is. “I prepared my own module of workshops and tried to take them to the schools of the city. But it did not achieve any fruition and finally when I was approached by a publication’s school initiative, I got a chance to educate youngsters on environmental and social issues. One thing that I discovered was that for the young adults and adolescents, the topic of waste segregation was not cool. One day I thought to discuss the issue with stories and called a bunch of kids and adults to my own terrace. Thus Storipur was born!” recounts the woman whose daughter acts as both a collaborator and critique in this venture.
From recounting the myth behind fabrics and looms to writing an autobiography of a mobile phone to communicate the intrinsic logic of e-waste, Priya has left no stone unturned in her quest to start a conversation on our responsibilities towards the environment. She says, “The only person who told me stories in Chennai, where I grew up, was my grandmother. From gripping folk tales to real life accounts of her young days as a canteen manager at a movie theatre - my grandmother’s stories certainly made an impression on me. I painted my own pictures out of her words and nowadays when kids who have just listened to me impersonate a phone in a story I am performing, say, “Hi, mobile phone!” when they see me, I trust that they too have painted a picture of their own.”
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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