A young man enthusiastically makes a day trip to Pisa from Rome, only to be told on reaching Pisa station that the last train back to Rome starts in 15 minutes. A bush pilot flies a plane loaded with arms over Lake Victoria in Africa, trying to skirt active volcanoes and stay above the clouds, and safely lands in a middle-of-nowhere runway, right in the thick jungle of Goma in DR Congo; but loses his documents as the arms are unloaded. A solo young girl exploring the world gets lost in a red-light area in Spain, and later realizes her hostel too is in the red-light area. A woman travelling to Croatia with great expectations of having a strapping young man for host but instead finds a young woman. A man grabs a chance to visit Islamabad and gets the rare opportunity as an Indian to explore Lahore, that too guided by a Pakistani official. A young woman traveler develops a crush on a handsome Buddhist monk in McLeod Gunj, only to realize later that he was only 16 and gay, too.
A bunch of travel lovers bunched up in a well-lit art studio. They form groups of five and share some of their travel stories. The most exciting ones are selected to be retold to the whole group. They re-live their travel experiences, pepping it up through skillful and imaginative narration; others vicariously experience the fun, anxiety, and excitement.
It was as if the walls of the room knew all about it. It just said “Magic is something you make”
We were at Tangerine Arts Studio in Union Park,Bandra. It was yet another story-telling session by Kommune, an initiative by Roshan Abbas and Gaurav Kapoor. This was our second time to a story-telling session. The first was in a slightly different format, where a curated set of stories were narrated by story tellers at the Bombay Local Food Festival at Khar last week. At Tangerine, the session followed the Kommune’s workshop format.
Kommune’s story-telling sessions have been in our to-do list for some time ever since Roshan started it a few months back. Thanks to the weekend schedule, we finally made it. And glad that we did.
