about

I am a storyteller working with adolescents and adults from multilingual, multicultural and disadvantaged backgrounds. I tell folk tales, fairy tales, epics and myths and autobiographical storytelling. I tell stories in different languages including Urdu, Hindi, English and Gujarati.

I was born and grew up in India, arriving in the UK as an adult in 1999. I moved to Scotland in 2017. My first memories of storytelling are of sitting wrapped up in the sari of my great grand-mother reading stories to me. I remember my father telling stories to me and my sister as children - stories which were autobiographical or of Marilyn Monroe, Tarzan and the adventures of the British royalty.

I did not grow up with a fascination of traditional Indian stories, instead a deep relish of story-listening that meant intimacy. I began to be fascinated by myths, stories and their power to hold community memories and transform hearts & minds during my doctoral fieldwork among indigenous and displaced communities in western India. 

I formally trained in telling stories with the School of Storytelling, Sussex and then with Jan Blake. I believe storytelling to be a community art form and am trained in Theatre of the Oppressed and witness based work, which enables those with no performance background to tell their stories.

silent sounds.

 

I was always a quiet child - happy being invisible (I even have a story about it!) I considered it my superpower. As I grew older, much of my work began to constellate around listening to the sounds that were not loud; voices that were not often heard. I just like silence. I love stillness.

 

Silent Sounds is about listening - to stories that are not heard immediately; about the silent spaces between words and all that allows silence and stillness to be the ground from which movement and sound spring. 

“When I began to be apprenticed to storytelling, I found pauses, the gaps between the words more telling, more intriguing, more vital to structuring a story. Hence, my company -
Silent Sounds.”

experiences

 

The bedrock of my early storytelling work was cultivated through designing & teaching courses to migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers relating to building up their expression skills through storytelling work in English, finding their voice in public arenas which may not necessarily be sympathetic to their issues and finding joy in a new land. These have had creative writing, music and storytelling based elements. I run workshops on basic skills of storytelling, biographical storytelling and deepening storytelling performance work based in India and the UK with performers, writers, charity workers, teachers, universities and mid-level corporate personnel. 

My recent work has expanded & shifted towards interweaving stories and the culture of storytelling from India (my birthplace) with stories from Scotland (my current home). My current work asks the question, ‘How do we make home?’ It relies on practises of attuning to the land through play and sensory mapping work, using practises of storytelling and immersing the body in particular areas. 

Finding & telling local stories are an important part of my work. I also work on the connections between landscape, story and ritual with 2 organisations: Anima Mundi School (online, The Netherlands) and StoryCommons (UK).

I love collaborations across disciplines, and have run workshops & collaborative performances with artists, architects, musicians, heritage & urban planners, designers, writers and performers.

 

With stories, I am drawn to themes relating to music, freedom, exile, women, war and honour, and natural elements such as water, deserts and arid landscapes. I am particularly interested the relationship between locality & memory, orality & voice, and the various mediums of finding voice.

My interests have found expression in projects across the UK, Europe and India: a 3 year residency with Fusion Arts, Oxford, co-authoring a monograph titled 'Inside Out, Outside In' on storytelling with asylum-seekers in detention; an internship with the Theatre of Witness based production 'Sanctuary', which involved working with asylum-seekers, victims of the Troubles in northern Ireland and those who offered them sanctuary to tell their stories through a staged production; working with anti-racist community groups in Glasgow, Glasgow Museums and Radio Awaaz (Glasgow) gathering stories of South Asian migrants for a book & radio series.

My most recent project ‘Cooking Tales’ - a collection of recipes where South Asian brides in 1950-60 Glasgow created South Asian flavours using Scottish ingredients and their stories won the ‘Spirit of Scotland’ award for the best charity project in 2023.

I have performed and told stories at several venues in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia and India. I tell stories in schools, in barns, by burns and beaches, on the land and in ruins of heritage buildings.

partnerships

 

Scottish Storytelling Forum, Board Member
(2024 - present)
https://www.storytellingforum.co.uk/

StoryCommons CIC, Director
(2023 - present)
https://www.wildstorycommons.org/aboutus

Friends of Amari, Member
(2018 - present)
https://www.friends-of-amari.org/

Anima Mundi School, Core faculty
(2018 - present)
https://www.animamundischool.org/

 

AtOne CIC, Founder member
(2022 - 2023)

Tellers without Borders, Core group Member
(2015 - 2019)

Counsel for Storytellers, Member
(2014 - 2023)