Outlook (Prime South) - Feb 10-26, 2001 

Twist In The Tales
A. S. Panneerselvan

"It goes in great swoops, it goes in spirals or in loops, it every so often reiterates something that happened earlier to remind you, and then takes you off again, sometimes summaries itself, it frequently digresses off into something that the story-teller appears to have thought of, then it comes back to the main thrust of the narrative. Sometimes it steps sideways and tells you about another, related story inside a story, then they all come back you see." This was Salman Rushdie’s definition of story-telling and Vayu Naidu’s recent performances in Chennai were its perfect example. Writer, storyteller and performer, Naidu sees herself as a mythological journalist, gathering experiences and wisdom of the past and conveying it to the present through language that is at once simple and profound, humorous and moving. Her story-telling derives from the oral tradition of India as she brings alive and creates anew myths, legends and folktales each time she tells them. Often live Jazz, contemporary and traditional music accompany her stories. Says she: "Story-telling works in paradoxes. It is highly structured performance, yet it’s very fluid. The grid is fixed but the narrative keeps changing and sometimes in the process even the grid changes. Every new twist makes an old story new"