Visualizing books

"If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story".

Looks like someone has quoted the above words. I'm reluctant to accept it completely, but I am ready to agree with it partially. Whenever I read a story book, I have the feeling that someone inside me is reciting the story for me. I imagine every story is told by a person (not really the author), who witnesses the events standing a few feet away from the characters. Obviously my narrator stands in the same position, however the characters move around; disadvantagouesly providing me a single point of view of the incidents and the characters. But still I get a picture of the people and the places from the description of my narrator and I'm drawn into the world that the author has created with the help of the guidance from my narrator. I see my protagonist, my antagonist, my supporting roleplayers, my milieu, and everything else, through the eyes of my narrator, just like how he sees and comprehends from the author's words.

When I see a story, the narrator in me is dead. He is no more to guide me and show my characters and travel me through incidents. I am guided by another person, be the director of the movie or play. Sadly, I'm losing my imaginative ability to understand the writer along with my narrator. Though it has some benefits. I can now get a multi dimensional view of the story if the external narrator provides me with one such thing. It seems pretty simple and easy to see a story rather than reading it. Isn't it? But mine is a negative response.

I think that's why booklovers are not satisfied when they see the same story on screen or on stage. Their own images of the characters and situations are given new color by the outside story teller. Me personally had a couple of experience in the past. Having watched LOTR on screen, I was not driven to read the book. Still I'm staying away from Harry Potter with a hope I'll read the series one day. Thanks to my higher secondary public examinations, I missed watching "Srirangathu Devathaigal" and "washingtonil Thirumanam" TV series. When I read those books after six years, I'm happy that my narrator is still alive in me. The same thing with Kalki's and Devan's work.

Unusally, sometimes I think a visual media also elevates your reading fervour. Occupied with a few unerasable images of "Alai Osai"'s characters and events, I am longing to read the Kalki's classic, just to revisit the new places I was shown by the other narrator and try whether I can get my own narrator to show me other perspective. I faintly remember it was aired in Doordarshan about a decade ago. So, it seems like I'm favoring both the sides of the coins. As you know the head alone never adds value to a coin and neither the tail by itself.

Stories are enjoyable when watched; and stories are lovable when read. So, read a story to get the experience of travelling closer to the writer's world by yourself and watch a story to witness the other side that was not revealed to you when you read it. This became my idea in the recent past. Maybe I can conclude by saying, "Even if you read, tell or show me a story, it is always a story. But my relation with it decreases respectively".