Exploring the Art of Storytelling and Personal Growth Through Karate

hi vinita a woman with lots of tastes and interests and i'm so happy that you know we're talking today i know you're a professor and you write books and you're a storyteller and i recently discovered you're also a karate enthusiast so i don't know how many activities you're a queen of so tell me something that you're really you know passionate about and the journey for that like how did you get started you know what has why have you taken that path okay so yeah i do have a whole range of interests and i think a lot of us are like that a lot of women at my age but the thing that's right now really um encouraging me is my storytelling and the reason for that is why i turn to storytelling is partially also because all i've ever wanted to do since i was a child was to be a writer and then so i keep writing stories and i keep writing novels but they don't get published so i said to myself there's something wrong with the way i tell a story and storytelling allows me to be in front of a live audience and when i tell a story i can actually sense you know when they're bored and when they're really in it and it helps me learn the craft and i'm also turning to folk tales and fairy tales into you know classics and to tell those stories and you find that what is it that end yours um all across generations across what are the stories that endure that people want to listen to over and over again and so it's a kind of research project to help me in my writing um it's also very fascinating by itself and when it comes to storytelling normally storytelling is for children yeah but i enjoy storytelling to adults because that's even a you know more it's a tougher call um again adults have heard it all and they're cynical and they don't want to hear stories and they're more interested in economics and in politics but still when you start to tell a story um they listen so there's still a child inside an adult and that's why it fascinates me so that's my passion right now if you ask me that's actually quite fascinating right you're talking about children who are more interested but really like when an adult gets a chance they love to listen to it talking about children you know i know you're a mother to a very happy and a successful boy how has that journey been i mean share something about your journey to motherhood and your experiences yes rupali that's a question close to my heart it's the greatest cliche in a woman's history so you know motherhood fulfills you and it's the ultimate goal and i don't really believe that's true for everybody because everybody gets to choose and some people may just not like that but for me for some reason it was very important and it also took a long time coming so there are all kinds of problems and maybe that's made it even more precious and desirable to me and i really enjoyed this journey so if you ask me it's like um before and after motherhood it's my life is like that because it's been um i maybe because the youngest so being responsible for somebody um being involved in you know their their evolution and then looking at them and listening to them talk and then seeing that they're not made they're actually they're not their own person and you know there's a there's god's hand in that and there's their own you know intention and desire and that's been like a work of art it's it's greater than any story i could have scripted because it's unexpected it's it's turns and um that's i think that's my ultimate finished complete work of art after that it's this journey but that yeah that's been a beautiful beautiful thing for me because like i said it came hard and with a lot of desire and it's something i really wanted so um i i've poured myself into it and i've got back a million times what i put in wow that is that is just so precious i mean i hope your son listens it and he'll feel so happy so another thing i really wanted to ask you was you know we all have like moments which are not the best moments you know where we are feeling down do you have any uh you know techniques or anything that has helped you overcome those moments which are not the best moments of life yeah i think by this time we go through a lot of losses a lot of pain a lot of disappointments even betrayals i mean so many things it's um you know that story just keeps turning and um for me uh karate i mean it's something that i'm not great at but i learned it with my son so we both went for karate classes and we both got the black belt and i'm not saying i'm fully deserving of it very flexible or the karate grandma kid or whatever but um what it has given me is you know there you go towards you you know you're going to be hit but you go towards that hit because that's also where your victory is and um what it's as an approach to any difficult situation what it's given me is this thing of not expecting things to be easy not expecting um the other person you know because you you know that you when you're in a ring you know you're going to be hit and that person's there to defeat you so this whole idea of i'm not saying it's an adversarial because actually it's like a dance and they're also helping you while they're defeating you by pointing out where you are weak so um that's that's an attitude i have taken into um you know difficulties that you don't let them totally beat you down i mean for a while you take it and you suck it in like you've been hit in the stomach and you know you wait and then the pain goes away and then you think about what you did wrong and the journey actually begins does begin with you where you say how could i have foreseen this there's somewhere that i was in my own head and i wasn't in this moment and i wasn't in my body and that's when this has hit me so hard so the next time around i should be able to see things coming and i should be able to uh prevent it and you still get hit but you know when you keep looking at it as almost like a game then you say well you're gonna get hit but you're gonna have to and sometimes you know it's like a punch a punch that's coming and you're resisting it it'll hit hard but if you're moving with it yeah you take away the pressure so that's or a punch or a chop you know so if you can move with it and block it and it's like a dance so uh that's what i figure that's how i try to deal with things and tell myself wow i don't understand whether you are really a human or whether you are like this god's like [Laughter] fascinated by what you say seriously like really thanks so much it's all in theory i'm not i'm not sure i can really bring it down into practice but yeah surely that's what i said so impressed so impressed thanks so much thank you so much for this you