21/100: Sankofa. An Akan word from Ghana that means to return, to seek and take. On Sunday, the Bangalore Storytelling Society organised a storytelling performance but this was no regular gig. These were personal stories that were told straight from the gut and that went right to your heart. I was to emcee the show so I wore this orange Kanjeevaram silk with a magenta woven border that was part of my trousseau.

Our lives are dotted with innumerable experiences, events and incidents that we sometimes take for granted. We may not have had huge successes or failures to talk about but if we can allow ourselves time to reach back into occurrences from our past-however simple they may seem, connect the dots and string them together, each of us has the ingredients for a powerful story that can point us to the future. This is the essence of Sankofa, a West-African philosophy that tells us, “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten”. Wearing sarees and telling stories, included!