Meet Arthi Anand of “Arts Tales with Arthi Anand”

Every once in a while, I come across a storyteller where one can feel the love for storytelling radiating even over a telephone conversation! Arthi Anand, author of the kids’ bestseller ‘ Ranganna ‘ and Founder of ‘Arts Tales With Arthi Anand’ falls into that category. She loves stories, books, children, music and art, and brings them to kids and grown-ups on weekends through Arts Tales in Bangalore. In her other avatar, she works as a marketing professional with an MNC fragrance brand. She also is the creator of Mister Muthu for Chandamama and author of the picture book ‘ Have you seen this ‘, published by Tulika.

Apart from bookstores and libraries, Bangalore Lit Fest and Bookalore, she has conducted events in The Green Pocket, Cavalry Cottage, Kitschdii, Timri, Hamleys, Hundred Hands, Cubbon Cubs among others. She volunteers through Samiksha for the Kidwai Cancer Kids unit and through Anand Vidyalaya for Ejjipura slum kids in Bangalore.

Read on to know more about Arthi Anand and the storyteller in her.

All of us have stories which we would like to tell others. Some of us share them and some shy away. We just need the right audience to get us started. I think I found mine.

I used to write stories while in school. But once I went into college and started working, I did not pursue it. My children made me re-discover my love for spinning a yarn. My story-telling skills were honed by series of anecdotal stories called “Mister Muthu” that I wrote on my personal blog. This was picked up by Chandamama and published as a monthly serial-story. The fan following which this serial generated surprised me. I also began to review books for Saffron Tree around the same time and began to understand what works in children’s fiction and what does not. With that my confidence grew and I started writing and telling stories for children.

Tulika Publis hers launched two picture books of mine: ‘ Have You Seen This? ‘ and ‘ Ranganna ‘. During the launch, I found I enjoyed narrating stories (mine as well as others’) and interacting with children. Also weaving trivia, song and craft into a session came naturally to me. As a marketing professional in my “other life” I have sufficient opportunities to refine these skills. I had found my audience or should I say they found me!

First, there is no compulsion to turn your hobby into a business venture. That means, you can be selective about the projects you take up and associate with only what resonates with you.

On the flip side, unlike a full time storyteller, interaction with professional storytellers is minimal and narrating at schools and touring for lit fests almost impossible.

Storytelling certainly enhanced my corporate avatar – clarity, conviction, communication, capturing the audience interest – is there anything that storytelling does not help us with?

[color-box color =” customcolorpicker =” rounded =false dropshadow =false]You can experiment, modify and evolve each time you tell a story, based on your audience’s reaction. It is a WIP (Work In Progress) in that sense. Instant gratification or rejection![/color-box]

I travel a lot, both on work and for pleasure. As a child we moved 4 states and about double the number of houses. English and Geography were my favorite subjects. I like to make my storytelling sessions “active”. So word play, quotes, trivia, maps all find a place in my stories. Travelling for work, I observe accents and voices. I like picking up a few words in all languages I encounter. I also avoid pathos in stories, like I do in real life.

The narrative experience is different each time. You can experiment, modify and evolve each time you tell a story, based on your audience’s reaction. It is a WIP (Work In Progress) in that sense. Instant gratification or rejection!

Moral

Creative individuals who listen deeply to others and transform their listening into art enrich their community. Arthi’s genuine connection to storytelling multiplies the impact of shared wisdom.

Historical & Cultural Context

Aesop’s Fables are short animal tales traditionally attributed to the enslaved Greek storyteller Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE). Each fable compresses a moral into a vivid scene, and through Latin, Arabic and European retellings they became a backbone of moral education worldwide.

This modern portrait celebrates the storyteller as cultural preserver – the role Aesop himself embodied. Rather than a traditional fable, it honors how stories circulate and multiply through tellers who listen with care. The piece echoes the Panchatantra’s frame (a teacher imparting wisdom) and the oral tradition’s democratic power to shape moral consciousness.

Reflection & Discussion

1. Why does Arthi care so much about sharing other people’s stories?
2. How do storytellers preserve culture and wisdom for future generations?
3. What gifts does a good listener bring to their community?

Did You Know?

• Aesop was believed to be a slave in ancient Greece around 620–564 BCE.
• Aesop’s Fables have been retold for over 2,500 years across virtually every culture.
• Many common English phrases like “sour grapes” and “crying wolf” come from Aesop’s Fables.

What This Tale Teaches Us Today

Old stories keep their power because their lessons never stop being useful. Here is how this one still applies:

• Traditional stories remind us that wisdom belongs to many cultures. No single tradition holds all the answers.
• Stories that have survived for centuries have done so because their lessons still work.
• Folk tales teach ethics without lecturing. A good story can reshape a mind more powerfully than any rule.

Why This Story Still Matters

Meet Arthi Anand of “Arts Tales with Arthi Anand” joins a vast global library of folk tales that human beings have been telling one another for thousands of years. Every culture has produced its own stories, but the deepest themes – courage, kindness, cleverness, loyalty, the cost of greed – appear again and again in different clothes. Modern readers who spend time with folk tales inherit something precious: a sense that people have always wrestled with the same basic questions, and that good stories can still help us find good answers. That is why these tales persist. Each one is a small tool for living, handed down quietly through generations.

Cultural Context and Continuing Influence

Folk tales like this one survived for hundreds of years through oral storytelling before any scholar thought to write them down. Grandparents told them to grandchildren, travelers traded them along roads and rivers, and mothers repeated them to babies who would one day repeat them to their own children. Each small retelling sharpened the story, discarded unnecessary parts, and polished the essential lesson. That long process of refinement is why a good folk tale feels so weighty – it has been shaped by thousands of listeners across generations, each contributing something small to the story we read today.

Modern readers sometimes wonder whether folk tales are still relevant in an age of apps and smartphones. The answer is yes, perhaps more than ever. The technology changes, but the underlying questions – about kindness, courage, loyalty, greed, family, fear, love – do not. These are the same questions that children asked around a fire in ancient India, around a hearth in medieval Ireland, around a campfire in 19th-century Korea. And they are the same questions children ask their parents today, just phrased differently. That is why a family that reads folk tales together is doing real cultural and emotional work, not simply entertaining itself.

Reading Folk Tales With Children

Reading folk tales aloud to children is one of the oldest and most effective forms of moral education. Unlike a lecture or a rule, a story slides past a child’s natural resistance and plants its lesson in the imagination, where it quietly grows. Years later, when the child meets a real situation that resembles the story – a bully at school, a dishonest coworker, a moment of temptation – the old tale rises to the surface of memory and offers guidance. That is why parents and teachers across every culture have trusted stories to do the work of raising good humans, long before formal schools or textbooks existed.

When reading this story with a young listener, try pausing at key moments and asking what the child thinks will happen next. Let them guess, even if they are wrong. That small act of prediction turns a passive listener into an active thinker. After the story ends, a simple open question – “What would you have done?” or “Who do you think was the smartest character?” – invites the child to connect the tale to their own life. Those conversations are where real learning happens, not during the reading itself but in the quiet moments that follow.

Older children and teenagers sometimes think they have outgrown folk tales. In reality, the best tales only deepen with age. A ten-year-old hears the surface plot; a fifteen-year-old notices the irony; a twenty-year-old sees the economic and political pressures on the characters; a forty-year-old understands the parents in the story for the first time. A good folk tale is a gift that keeps unfolding for decades. Families who read and reread the same stories across the years discover this naturally, and pass the discovery down.

A Final Word

Every folk tale carries within it the accumulated judgment of thousands of listeners across many generations. When a story has been told for a thousand years and still moves children today, that is not an accident. It is proof that the story is saying something true about the human condition. The wiser the listener, the more they see in a tale they have heard a hundred times before. Reading these stories slowly, out loud, with children beside us, we are joining the longest conversation our species has ever had with itself. Every tale we share is a quiet vote for patience, for meaning, and for the old idea that a good story is one of the finest things one generation can hand down to the next.

We hope this telling gave you something worth carrying into your day – a small lesson, a useful image, a question to ask your child at dinner. Folk tales do their best work in the hours and years after the reading ends, quietly shaping how we see the world and each other. Thank you for spending time with this story, and for keeping the old tradition of careful listening and thoughtful retelling alive.