The snake opened up his mouth. It was the biggest blackest mouth she had ever seen! She looked up to the sky, she could not see the sky as his mouth reached up to the sky. She looked down to the ground, she could not see the ground as his mouth reached down to the ground. In the scariest, coldest, blackest voice she had ever heard the snake said..............  

 

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Seema Anand is a Doctor of Narrative Practices, working with the uses and the implications of ‘Oralness’, specialising in Story telling. Seema specialises in global mythologies - comparing and retelling stories through different cultural nuances to give everyone ownership of the tales. Her ongoing work in researching and collating stories from the ancient Asian texts is an invaluable resource, both in the corporate and the education sectors. Story, according to Seema, is a physical skill and a visual art and her work is developed to include alternative aesthetic and cultural perspectives for all ages and capacities. 

Seema is a practitioner of the traditional art of Sutradharaa. According to the Puranas, ancient Hindu texts, storytelling is a gift of the Goddess – a gift that is the privilege and the power of a select few whom the goddess has decided to favour. As part of this gift the goddess confers on her storytellers immortality and omniscience on her storytell---ers; they say that her storytellers know what the Gods are going to do even before the gods do it! In between lives even Yamraj the God of Death is not allowed to claim them because his hand wipes out all memory. Instead the storytellers become the revered rats, worshipped at specific Goddess temples, till they are ready to be reborn – because it takes many, many lifetimes to learn all the stories and goddess cannot afford for a storyteller to start afresh each time!