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A story for every woman

What brings Diane Wolkstein from Manhattan to Chennai? Well, it's her love for telling stories

GODDESSES FASCINATE HER Diane Wolkstein PHOTO: R. RAGU

For a woman so frail-looking, Diane Wolkstein fairly sizzles with a raw burst of creative energy. Not for nothing is this 60 plus leader of the U.S. storytelling movement one of the world's best storytellers: just watch her as she breaks into song and dance — with a story to go with it — and you can understand why audiences the world over have been spellbound by her recreation of ancient stories, ranging from that of a young Haitian woman whose song animates an orange tree to growth to that of the Sumerian goddess Inanna's open celebration of female sexuality.

In Chennai recently as part of her exploratory visit to know about "other spiritual story-telling traditions," Diane lived her part as New York city's official storyteller: the first evening at dancer Anita Ratnam's house where her tale of a monkey's love for misery had the select audience singing and cooing together, and the next morning at the University of Madras where she had a group of students — and Anita Ratnam and actor Swarnamalya for good measure — jiving along with her.

'A political act'

Ever since she began her story-telling career 40 years ago — as the recreational director for New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation — stories have been a `political act' for her.

"My life-force is connected to story-telling. Stories offer one a soul-map for living. It is all about being political, about bringing awareness and tolerance," says the globetrotter who is the moving force behind Manhattan's Central Park tradition of storytelling for over four decades.

Diane's repertoire of stories started with a trip to Haiti in 1972, which ended in a 400-story bestseller "The Magic Orange Tree and other Haitian Folktales." After that came what would turn out to be a life-long engagement with the story of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, "I am a Jew and wanted to know where my ancestors came from" — a story that has been performed over a hundred times all over the world.

The `inward' journey of Inanna, the goddess of love, war and fertility, was waiting to be told to the world by Diane and eminent Sumerologist, Samuel Noah Kramer, who deciphered the 1900 BC myth from a series of cuneiform (clay) tablets that were found buried in the sands of the ancient city of Ur in Iraq.

"Inanna is a celebration of a woman's sexuality in its unabashed eroticism and was an indication of the way women lived before they were straitjacketed into male `priestly' notions of control over a woman's body." Diane's Inanna is a version of the ancient goddess and out of it was born the best-selling Harper Collins' publication, "Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth", which has been published in six languages and is frequently excerpted in anthologies of religion, literature, healing and spirituality. India, with its own unparalleled collection of goddess stories, holds a natural fascination.

On frequent trips here, Diane visits temples all over the country to look for ways to enrich the Goddess Revival Movement: "Goddesses all over the world have been similar, though in Indian mythology, you may not find as open a celebration of female sexuality as you find in the Inanna story. From days ancient, a goddess' journey has always been inward, into the soul. No doubt, Inanna possesses some of the characteristics of Indian goddesses."

Tamil Nadu, especially, holds an undying attraction as "there is no other place in the world where the women walk with so much beauty. In a city like New York, for example, all you see is haggard-looking women."

Diane will be back in Chennai next year for a whole week of "goddess story telling" at the International Storytelling Conference being organised by the University of Madras along with Chennai-based friend and folklorist, Eric Miller.

VANI DORAISAMY

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