Sheherazade, though a fictive character only, is one of my favourite persons because she is the best exponent of a favourite theory, that is, story-telling works where direct instruction or dictation, preaching or pleading, lecturing or hectoring, would fail dismally.

Sheherazade, as we all know, is that famous creator of the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a collection of wondrous tales of flying carpets and treasure caves and genii that can be summoned up from oil lamps to do one’s bidding. She is the iconic storyteller, for her stories were so compelling that the evil sultan who had condemned her to death, wanted to hear more and more, until in the end he not only revoked the death sentence but married her!

My family boasted two Sheherazades. As a child, I listened spellbound to the tales told by my mother and my grandfather. Their tales had none of the life-or-death urgency of Sheherazade’s, of course, but they had their own serious purpose—to pass on the many moral lessons learnt from forbears, in a continuing transmission of the ancestral Taoist and Confucianist traditions.

Filial piety was the most important value to be passed down to the younger generation. If Mother or Ah Kong had simply said sternly, ‘Show respect to your elders at all times, or the Lightning God will strike you dead!’ I would have defiantly raised my hands to cover my ears. As it was, I listened, wide-eyed to the story of the Young Boy and the Basket:

There was a farmer who was getting very disgruntled by the fact that he was supporting an old father who had grown too old and too weak to help in the fields anymore. ‘And moreover he eats three bowls of rice every day!’ grumbled the farmer. So he told his wife to reduce the three bowls to two. Then the two were reduced to one. But this wasn’t enough for the farmer, and he decided to get rid of the old man once and for all.

He decided to make a large basket, big enough to hold the old man, and to carry him deep into the forest where he would be left to die. As he was making the basket, his young son asked what he was doing. ‘For your Grandfather,’ said the farmer, and explained the purpose. The boy’s eyes lit up. ‘Don’t forget to bring the basket back when you’re done with Grandpa,’ he said, ‘for I would need it when it’s your turn!’

There was another tale to teach filial piety, and although at that time, I thought it very silly, I enjoyed it all the same. A young man every night before he went to sleep, took off his shirt, stood outside his hut and said in a loud voice, ‘Mosquitoes, mosquitoes, I invite all of you to come now and bite my body. Bite me all you want, and leave my old mother alone, to sleep peacefully!’

Part of Sheherazade’s strategy was to cunningly leave the ending of each story till the next day, so as to force the sultan to keep postponing the day of her execution. Of course neither Grandfather nor Mother could do that with their young audience, seated around wide-eyed with eager anticipation, breathlessly asking, with each development in the story, ‘What happens next? Quick, tell me, what happens next?’

When I was a teacher, I used the Sheherazade trick as a kind of motivational device, to get my students, all restless teenagers, to pay more attention in class. I told them, ‘If you listen attentively and take down notes properly, I will tell you a story at the end as a reward!’ I watched their faces suddenly brightening and added, ‘It will be a love story’, watched the faces brighten still more, and decided to up the bribe recklessly, ‘It will be an adult love story!’

Sheherazade’s trick worked like a dream.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...