FTV and JR Students Experience Storytelling with Katha Kathan
21-January-2026
The students of Film, Television and Digital Media and Journalism and Media Convergence had the opportunity to attend a session with Katha Kathan, a collective that works towards bringing back stories told in languages that are slowly being forgotten. The session was led by the founders, Jameel Gulrays and Rekha Rao, who spoke about how stories were once written and shared in many languages, passed from one generation to the next. They reflected on how, over time, as languages fade from everyday use, the stories within them risk being lost as well.
The aim of Katha Kathan is to highlight the importance of speaking in one’s own language and keeping the tradition of storytelling alive. Along with other artists from the collective, the session featured narrated stories by writers such as Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, and Qurratulain Hyder. The stories by these artists are not widely known today. By performing these narratives in their original languages and cultural settings, the artists presented them in a new light, bringing forward the relevance it holds.
For the students, the session was an enriching experience. It introduced them to a different form of storytelling and allowed them to understand the role of language in preserving culture and memory. The students also had the opportunity to interact with the artists. The session ended with a question-and-answer discussion, where the students shared their thoughts on the stories, spoke about what they learned, and reflected on what it was like to engage with narratives in a new language.
By Eshisha Java (JR)