My mother

My mother

A story-teller

My mother, she could not write or read, but what a brain she had. You know, in India the village homes (I was born in a village) and all the village homes had very large stoops. Do you call it stoops? Porches? And in the evenings after supper, the whole neighborhood used to gather on the stoop and my mother used to tell them stories with some meaning to it. Where she got it from I don’t know. But, what did surprise me was this, that after the day I was born, her stories became more and more profound. I didn’t teach her anything, I was just born.

Nevertheless, so all that came from experience in her life, and what a wonderful story teller she was, and is. She’s 90 now. She is in India. And of course, I do look after her and support her. And then she comes to a story and at the moment when you are saying what is going to happen she would take out‑‑she is addicted to sniffing snuff. As a matter of fact, she has a factory there manufacturing snuff and its distributed throughout India it’s so famous. Her name is Jumuna. And the name of it is Jumuna snuff. And she sells wholesale and retail at 90 years of age. But if she and I would take a walk she’d outstrip me anytime.

So now, coming back to her sniffing, when it comes to the critical pause, she’d take out her snuff box. And, here’s people anxiously waiting, «Now what has happened?» You remember the old‑time serials in the cinema where the wagon is rolling off a bridge or the little shack is being bombarded and shot at or on fire, and this helpless girl is in that fire there, and the next week you must go to see what has happened. Did she come out alive? That kind of thing. So she had that beautiful, timed pause and then she would carry on. Do you see? Excuse the diversion into other things, but this also shows creativity. You can only create the pause at a crucial moment if you are creative and know the art of delivery, for example.