A bard sings for the ears, and a storyteller sings to the mind and soul; shaping souls with stories on life, cruelty and love and humor. I like to think that I come from a family of storytellers. My grandmother tells me of how her father was an Honorary Magistrate at the Mysore Kings Court. My father tells me stories of elephants breaking into his living room. I decided to enrich this tradition with my own stories.

I happen to be very shy yet melodramatic and this often creates imbroglios that leave me tinged with fear. However, my friends laugh, giggle and gawk when I recount these incidents (though it’s perhaps more because they’re drunk but I’m a glass-half-full person).

I think there's no better place to start my career in storytelling then presenting you with three such situations over the next three weeks

Part One: Golden Bliss

This incident took place at a glitzy Victorian style hotel which was a ten-minute walk from my home. To me though, it was cozy and homey as I've been swimming in their pool with my father since I was five. On this particular day, I was thirteen and filled with cliche teen angst much like any other prepubescent. As I lapped the pool I ‘crafted’ awfully gaudy poetry, on the lines of “ As the deep blue water touches my back, why can’t the Math teacher cut me some slack.” Often, while engaged in such artistic pursuits, I would also observe, well, you could call it stare, at the other patrons at the pool. It so happened that today I was alone, save for a red frizzy haired, middle aged man with sagging freckled cheeks and other sagging body parts. That day, however, was special since they had just installed heaters in the pool. As I stared at the sky, with my purple tinted goggles on, my bundle of nerves began unwrapping. All stress and emotion and thought left my body as I entered a dazed state of relaxation as the heated water surrounded and engulfed me.

I took off my goggles and on seeing that the water was hot and yellow, radiating from the old man - my relaxation evaporated leaving frenzied panic, as I stood up and ran from the pool, obviously screaming and flailing after realizing that I had been simmering in old-man pee all this while.

Moral of the Story: paraphrasing Shakespeare " all that glitters is not gold, it might be pee, though."