The other day while yakking with a friend of mine over a call and blowing small episodes into full blown details of a short story, I wondered where did that characteristic come from.

I kind of remembered that when I was a kid, after dinner I would sit on the coffee table in the living room, with my parents, brother and sister around and tell stories on what all happened at the school that day. All anecdotes were narrated with the intent of making everyone laugh or rather all anecdotes were what I found super funny and they generated laughter. I actually still do that. I remember when I left home for the first time to do my post graduation and after few months of having lived away and not getting home made food, when I finally made my first trip home, I actually sat and narrated all incidents around food for 4 hours and my father was amused, saying, “How can you talk about food for so long?”. Though, all incidents were amusing, the skill of telling a narrative in a long winded way and trying to inject humour in it is something I still do.

Which makes me believe that perhaps, because, as a child I was encouraged a lot to tell stupid stories I still look for stories in everyday life. And because stories come not only from knowing and observing what happened, the best part of the story comes from understanding why someone did what they did. From following that journey of the story and then arriving at the conclusion.

In books the stories end with sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle conclusion of that understanding, understanding of why the main character was doing what they were doing. It feels like, once we have understood the character, it is time or rather a natural end to the story after having gone through what happened in great detail.

As kids we don’t know that, we just know that was sooooooo…. funny or that was soooooo…. sad but as adults we get to know why it felt funny or sad.

The end is the understanding, or understanding is the end of every story.