The final chapter in Mr. Sree Krishna Sreelam’s book “5 killer habits’ is another favourite. The stories you hear growing up define you majorly today. The epics I heard, the Geronimo stilton, the Enid Blyton, etc all that I’ve read as a child grew into me and sprouted into a teenager who just wants to write and show the world her talent. With age grew my thirst for literary masterpieces and almost finished the entirety of Edgar Allan Poe, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Stories are not just about personal growth, they help you connect with others, the amount of times all my friends and I had insane stories (tw: lore) to tell each other just brought us closer. The number of stories my grandmothers would recite as a child have an impact on my spiritual believes and finally my parents and their never-ending stories about how lucky I am compared to them, like ok mom i get it you climbed Everest to go to school no big deal. Stories are so full of life and have immense potential, there’s tall tales, short stories, blatant white lies and piping hot tea about people (you got to love drama). It’s never a bore when there’s a story to listen to or tell about. Peter Parker made stories (excuses) to MJ and aunt May all the time and I always have a story to tell my parents to get out of problems that i definitely caused. The memories each story carries harbours a lot of emotion and resolution to who you are now. When you meet a new person, they surely have something exciting or mournful to tell and this cycle never ends. These tales shape you into you. You are an original being of the stories you listened to and now to quote Leo Tolstoy, “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.” this basically sums up stories for me. An elaborate story can be a massive bore. A story about too much positivity will enrage anger. An entire tale on honest truths will mostly get you in trouble (don’t resort to lying always). Every culture, every family, every person has stories, some are told around bonfires, some during bedtime and some shared over fights. Stories are not just entertainment they’re the very threads that stitch our lives, our memories, and our identities together. They carry a great deal and at the end of the day, stories are the closest things to immortality.

-Pragati Katta