The Storytellers in the Living Room

What would happen if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, with a stomach on the verge of bursting and not a toilet in sight? When Kommune co-founder and actor-host- storytelling icon Roshan Abbas found himself in that very same situation, he was forced to abandon the Swacch Bharat Abhyan and resort to something that left him red-faced forever!

Living a life without constants can be unimaginable for some. Without a stable home, without your dearest friends; having to leave life’s important things behind can often take its toll. For Kommune’s in-house poet/storyteller Shamir Reuben, growing up as the son of an Air Force pilot meant those very same things – having to fall in love with something, only to bid it a painful goodbye.

Blame horror movies or just basic human tendency, we’ve all had that irrational fear of sleeping alone at some point in our lives. For actress-VJ- chef Maria Goretti, that fear became a lifelong phobia that refused to go away despite her best attempts to overcome it. But one day, on a night alone in a distant land, something happened that changed Maria’s life forever.

With the age of the internet and the overwhelming influence of social media, love has undergone varying degrees of changes. For rising poet and writer Rabia Kapoor, love became a double-sword that she had to learn to wield both ways; not just in the real world, but also when she was in the virtual.

Parenthood marks the beginning of an amazing responsibility. Suddenly, the consequences of your actions aren’t just limited to your own, but to the life of another being, your own creation. Director Rraj Kaushal believed that his actions as a parent and a human being had helped raise the perfect child, a gentle, affable soul called Vir, who could really do no wrong.

Nostalgia can bring back a tidal wave of emotions to sweep over any emotional state of being. For poet-songwriter Kausar Munir, nostalgia took her back into time when her grandmother led her through the rustic and bewitching sights of good old Bombay, with its sights and smells that effortlessly etched themselves into her memory forever.

There are few things in the world as devastating as suicides. The mere thought of a human being pushed to the brink of emotional exhaustion is terrifying, considering we all undergo some degree of trauma at different points in our lives. For actress-poet Priya Malik, understanding the reason behind suicides became a morbid obsession at a very young age.

Motherhood is no less than a revelation for most women, as they discover emotions that they thought they were never capable. For renown TV host Mini Mathur, motherhood did just that when she became a mother the first time around, but it was her second born child, Sairah, who taught her that motherhood had far more to it than she could imagine.

Tess Joseph felt like she’d finally found a man worth loving when a regal, handsome Rajput walked into her life one day. But not all love stories find happy endings, and Tess soon figured that it was time that she called it quits. With the end of the relationship though, certain formalities make themselves known- like returning the gifts they once bought for you.

Puberty can often mean a pretty rough transition for any teenager, and Shamir Reuben was no different. Accustomed to looking like a tranquilized penguin throughout adolescence, Shamir Reuben felt puberty transform him into a completely different being altogether, as self-belief and confidence started to play their parts.