Toddler watching cartoon on the ipad.
“Apart from lulling us to sleep, being fun, entertaining and instilling morals and virtues in us, folktales convey important historical and cultural perspectives.”
By Mohammad Tawheed
INSIDE the living-cum-dining room at Khursheed Ahmad’s home in Anantnag, a habitual scene has been emerging for the last couple of years.
The headman sits with his back against the wall, scrolling through social media feeds on his phone and in the middle of the room, his toddler son switches between the ring and long sitting positions while waving his hands and liking the light, sounds and movements on the TV screen.
Distracted when his son giggles upon recognizing familiar characters and voices on the screen, Khursheed often ponders over the role and responsibility he has in readying this toddler for facing up the real world.
“Raising a child is not an easy task,” Khursheed remarks apprehensively. “However, both my wife and I are hopeful of being the best possible parents that we can be for our son.”
Reminiscing about his upbringing and how parents in Kashmir would impart life lessons to children at home, Khursheed fondly recollects that as child he routinely heard his grandparents and parents tell him different kinds of stories.
“In fact,” he says, “one of the most cherished parts of childhood for the Kashmiris used to be their parents tucking them inside their pheran and telling them padshahkath.”
Padshahkath are the folktales of Kashmir with characters ranging from gagar (rats) and shal (jackal) to navid (barber) and peer-darwesh (saints).
Also called luke kathe, Padshahkath was Kashmir’s favourite winter pastime. Professional storytellers, Kise-khan or Daleelgor, would enliven the tedious work of shawl or namda weavers. Surrounded by kids from various households and sitting over an upside down phout (basket weaved from willow-wicker), storytellers weaved stories with flair as if competing with local Shahtosh and pashmina weavers.
“Padshahkath implies tales or spoken words of wisdom and inspiration,” says Syed Areej, the only female Ladishah of Kashmir. “You derive valuable life lessons and moral values from them.”
Padshahkath, she says, was a unique way of meaningful interaction between different generations — usually grandparents and their grandchildren. “It made possible that elders could pass on their experience and wisdom to the younger generations in a fun and enjoyable way,” the lady Ladishah says. “However, changing value systems and parenting style have forced kids away from their elders. Today the most preferred way for parents to pamper their kids is making them watch cartoons and other visuals on digital screens.”
A kid watching cartoon on tablet phone.
Drawing a comparison between the present scenario and his own childhood days, Zareef Ahmad Zareef—a retired cultural officer, a poet and an oral historian—says: “Smartphones and other technologies have made our life easier but unfortunately we remain ignorant to their ill-effects especially the harm caused by their unregulated use to the health and over all development of children.”
Unlike the contemporary unprecedented and uncontrolled access to information and knowledge, Zareef in his childhood—when even the faculty at his school was limited—would routinely listen to Padshahkath at home and at school as well.
“Padshahkath was a part of our education both formal and informal,” says a wistful Zareef. “It was a form of guided learning for us, as narrator would exactly know what kind of a story to tell and when to tell it. Some stories cautioned us against unfairness and negligence whereas other stories would be chivalrous or informed us about our roots and surroundings.”
In fact, says Khursheed Ahmad, a PhD scholar in Comparative Literature, the tradition of telling stories through word of mouth had a huge role in preserving the history and culture of a place and its people.
“Apart from lulling us to sleep, being fun, entertaining and instilling morals and virtues in us, folktales convey important historical and cultural perspectives,” says the scholar facing with the conundrum of being the best possible father to his son, despite the fact that he’s yet to tell a Padshahkath to his three-year-old son. “Had there been no tradition of oral storytelling in Kashmir, there would be no Vakhs of Lal Ded today.”
In trying to untangle a complex situation similar to Khursheed’s conundrum, Zareef with a contemplative look on his face, says, “We’ve lost control and direction as a society. Our children are fluent in languages other than their mother tongue. And once you lose your mother tongue, you also lose the stories and traditions woven around it. As a result, we witness a general lack of the sense of belonging, and total apathy towards our culture.”
Kids watching toons on their smartphones.
To encourage parents like Khursheed to spend time with their kids and better still to tell them Padshahkath, Nadia Nahvi—a clinical psychologist—suggests: “Stories are a wonderful psychological tool. Talking and telling stories to kids from an early age helps them acquire language and develop communication skills. Stories particularly play a critical role in fostering the imagination of a child. When a child listens to a story, it tries to imagine the characters in that story and this helps in the development of abstract thinking powers. Through stories, parents can introduce different perspectives and ideas to their kids. Besides, stories are a time-tested technique to make your kid sleep faster and longer.”
Parents, the mental health expert warns, should avoid indulging their young kids in unnecessary smartphone use. “Most of the times what kids view on the screens is beyond their comprehension and causes strain in their eyes and neck,” she says. “And there’s always a possibility of kids developing vicarious trauma if they are exposed to gruesome or distressing material via images or videos on social media for a prolonged period of time.”
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